Beacon Broadside: A Project of Beacon Presstag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-14005452019-12-17T16:55:17-05:00Ideas, opinions, and personal essays from respected writers, thinkers, and activists. A project of Beacon Press, an independent publisher of progressive ideas since 1854.TypePadThe Best of the Broadside in 2019tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa88330240a4f81c30200b2019-12-17T16:55:17-05:002019-12-17T17:07:42-05:00You won’t find corny-ass statements here proclaiming that the year 2020 will usher a time of clearer vision. Puh-lease. That’s tired. What’s worth saying here, however, is we need to keep our eyes on the issues that matter to us as we begin a new decade. Now that’s wired. We can get a picture of what matters by looking back at some of the top read blog posts on the Broadside in 2019.Beacon Broadside

You won’t find corny-ass statements here proclaiming that the year 2020 will usher a time of clearer vision. Puh-lease. That’s tired. What’s worth saying here, however, is we need to keep our eyes on the issues that matter to us as we begin a new decade. Now that’s wired. We can get a picture of what matters by looking back at some of the top read blog posts on the Broadside in 2019. Clearly, we’re still coming to terms with our cultural identity as it pertains to race and injustice and the chokehold of whiteness on liberation, among other issues. And as always, we’re grateful to our authors for giving us the context and critique to understand these issues and where to go from here.

So here are the highlights of the Broadside this year. See you in the new decade with more insightful blog posts from our authors!

“Americans like stories like [Carol Channing’s], because racial and ethnic passing is ubiquitous inside a culture known for self-invention. But being Black is about more than biology, one drop rule be damned. Being Black is not just about singing and dancing, and shucking and jiving. Being Black goes beyond complexion—it’s a cultural thing.”

“Let me be as clear with my readers as Dr. DiAngelo was with us that night. It is up to white people to understand that our ancestors created racism. We have inherited it. Our denial and deflection and fragility perpetuate it. It is on us to eradicate it.”

“Black Feminism can be a protection and a guide, and as more of us become parents, we have a responsibility to change the narrative, minimize the harm, and shift our culture and communities toward appreciation and respect for Black women and girls everywhere. Bringing our daughters up believing in and never questioning the existence of their own ‘magic’ is restorative and promising, electrifying and declarative, radical and hopeful.”

“The entire incident is a classic display of settler privilege and fragility. Only in a society that systematically and simultaneously denies and justifies its genocidal foundation can an elderly Native man singing and playing a drum surrounded by hundreds of frenzied white males dressed in attire that to American Indians represents the colonial wrecking ball be construed as menacing.”

“The fact is that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed—that’s the long, sometimes tragic and turbulent story of history. And if people who are enslaved sit around and feel that freedom is some kind of lavish dish that will be passed out on a silver platter by the federal government or by the white man while the Negro merely furnishes the appetite, he will never get his freedom.” (Originally posted in March 2018)

“The sounds, sights, and smells of slave auctions contributed to the horror of enslaved children’s lives. Loud, rhythmic bid calls echoing from the mouths of auctioneers competed with chatter from potential buyers, the rattling of chains, and the everyday noises of a town center. Joining these audible oddities was another unpleasant sound that could be heard above all others at the end of a sale: the cries of wailing mothers, overcome with grief after being separated from their children.” (Originally posted in June 2018).

“We, as Americans, do not have a shared understanding of the definition of racism. We live segregated lives and are deeply divided along political lines. Relying on politicians and the media to unravel racial dynamics does not serve us well. Fully understanding racism requires deep understanding of history and the social sciences, and a lot of multiracial living, which most of us do not engage in.”

“Like most of us living in the US, I was sickened by this weekend’s news of shootings in El Paso and Dayton. Coming into work, feeling so stricken by these events, I was heartened by the fact that I could turn to a group of colleagues and immediately begin talking about what kind of resources we could offer in the wake of these senseless tragedies. I feel, as I often do, heartened to be working in an environment where it is our job to try to create these resources.”

“There’s a reason Mockingbird is assigned to thirteen-year-olds. The moral message of the novel is a simplistic one: Racism is bad. Very, very bad. Also, bad people are racists. Good people, the reader is assured, are not racists . . . As readers, we are aligned with Scout and by extension Atticus, who embodies rational, educated “racial tolerance,” in sharp contrast to the novel’s depiction of an angry, ignorant, racist mob. Everything in the reading experience of the novel confirms a white reader’s sense of herself as open-minded, tolerant, woke. ‘If I lived in 1930s Alabama, I would never do that,’ the white reader thinks. ‘I am one of the good white people.’” (Originally posted in December 2018)

400 Years a Traumatized Nation: A Reading List for the Fourth Centennial of Slavery in Americatag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa88330240a4a03f8e200d2019-08-16T15:07:05-04:002019-08-16T15:15:06-04:00It’s a clear-cut case of PTSD: Post-Traumatic Societal Disorder. The centuries-long trauma wrought by our nation’s history of slavery requires intensive therapy, because everybody is affected. Even our author, Daina Berry, said, “We are still living in the aftermath of slavery. It’s the stain on our flag and the sin of our country. Once we recognize this, face it, study it, and acknowledge the impact it has on all Americans, then we will be in a position to determine how we can move forward.” One of the ways to come to terms with it and move forward is to take in the full history, unabridged—free of sugar-coating, mythmaking, and claims of “American exceptionalism.”Beacon Broadside

It’s a clear-cut case of PTSD: Post-Traumatic Societal Disorder. The centuries-long trauma wrought by our nation’s history of slavery requires intensive therapy, because everybody is affected. Even our author, Daina Berry, said, “We are still living in the aftermath of slavery. It’s the stain on our flag and the sin of our country. Once we recognize this, face it, study it, and acknowledge the impact it has on all Americans, then we will be in a position to determine how we can move forward.” One of the ways to come to terms with it and move forward is to take in the full history, unabridged—free of sugar-coating, mythmaking, and claims of “American exceptionalism.” (What’s “exceptional” is the amount of damage done.) What better occasion than the 400th anniversary of this inhumane industry? Working back to 1619 and before, here’s a list of titles from our catalog to get us on the path to recovery . . . and hopefully, reparations.

“Bailey is not afraid to ask difficult questions . . . [She] expands and troubles our understanding of the African diaspora. In this fine and accessible study of the slave trade, Bailey places African voices of this era at the center of the writing of history.”—Atlanta Journal Constitution

“A brilliant resurrection of the forgotten people who gave their lives to build our country. Rigorously researched and powerfully told, this book tallies the human price paid for the nation we now live in and restores these unrecognized Americans—their hopes, loves, and disregarded dreams—to their rightful place in history. Searing, revelatory, and vital to understanding our nation’s inequities.”—Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration

“A powerful and important book that charts the rich and dynamic history of Black women in the United States. It shows how these courageous women challenged racial and gender oppression and boldly asserted their authority and visions of freedom even in the face of resistance. This book is required reading for anyone interested in social justice.”—Keisha N. Blain, author of Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom

“In Kindred, Octavia Butler creates a road for the impossible and a balm for the unbearable. It is everything the literature of science fiction can be.”—Walter Mosley

“This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the historical reality of the slave experiences. Carbado and Weise have diligently selected narratives that will challenge readers’ presumptions and cut against the mythology that slaves were passive, that mostly men (and not women) ran away, that slaves typically ran North (not South), and that gender and racial passing were rare occurrences. A landmark achievement, The Long Walk to Freedom allows fugitive slaves to speak for themselves—on their own terms and in their own voices.”—Dr. Mary Frances Berry, author of History Teaches Us to Resist: How Progressive Movements Have Succeeded in Challenging Times

“Dominique’s poems paint brutal truths. Beautiful truths. They seek to uncover a history hidden under the skin. In an era in which such truths are in danger of being forgotten, Dominique’s voice is an essential. Her stories are an unearthing, the soil that connects us to our past, a lens through which, if we look close enough, we may see something that directs us to a kinder future.”—Staceyann Chin, author of The Other Side of Paradise

“What a courageous journey-communicated in an engaging, readable style with candor, humor, and deep feeling. This book shed light on the thoughts, questions, and feelings I have about race, society, culture, and historical, generational, and structurally induced trauma—and the human ability to transcend. In reading it, I realized there are questions I’m still afraid to ask about race, things I’m afraid to say, and yet I realized anew the power of acknowledgment, mercy, justice, and conflict transformation. I’m grateful to DeWolf and Morgan for not just taking the journey but for sharing their story with us.”—Carolyn Yoder, founding director of STAR: Strategies for Trauma Awareness & Resilience

“An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a gift. Paul Ortiz wields the engaging power of a social historian to bring vividly to life so many Black and Brown fighters for human rights in the Americas. Ambitious, original, and enlightening, Ortiz weaves together the seemingly separate strivings of Latinx and Black peoples into a beautiful tapestry of struggle.”—Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

“This book shines because of Ms. Cassandra Pybus’s stellar research. Her description of the upheaval surrounding the American Revolution is sound . . . Cassandra Pybus’s book adds much needed historical documentation to a group of people who have largely been forgotten by history. Every school and public library should own a copy of this book.”—Christina Maria Beaird (PLA), Plainfield Public Library District, Plainfield, IL

“A modern biography of the radical abolitionist Benjamin Lay has long been overdue. With the sure hand of an eminent historian of the disfranchised, Marcus Rediker has brought to life the wide-ranging activism of this extraordinary Quaker, vegetarian dwarf in a richly crafted book. In fully recovering Lay’s revolutionary abolitionist vision, Rediker reveals its ongoing significance for our world.”—Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition

“A fascinating book . . . that brings to life the historical soundscape of 18th- and 19th-century African Americans at work, play, rest, and prayer . . . This remarkable achievement demands a place in every collection on African American and US history and folklife.”—Library Journal

Beacon Authors Reflect on the 400th Anniversary of Slavery in Americatag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa88330240a476b760200c2019-08-15T16:27:20-04:002019-08-16T11:04:59-04:001619, a year to go down in infamy like 1492. 400 years ago this month, a ship reached a coastal port in the British colony of Virginia, carrying more than twenty enslaved Africans. Stolen from their homes, these men and women were sold to the colonists in what would become known as the United States. The Atlantic Slave trade would feed this vicious cycle of reducing Africans to commodities through the brutal bondage of forced labor and sexual coercion, the repercussions of which we live with centuries later. How do we as a country reckon with and heal from this history? We asked some of our authors to reflect on this and share their remarks below.Beacon Broadside

1619, a year to go down in infamy like 1492. 400 years ago this month, a ship reached a coastal port in the British colony of Virginia, carrying more than twenty enslaved Africans. Stolen from their homes, these men and women were sold to the colonists in what would become known as the United States. The Atlantic Slave trade would feed this vicious cycle of reducing Africans to commodities through the brutal bondage of forced labor and sexual coercion, the repercussions of which we live with centuries later. How do we as a country reckon with and heal from this history? We asked some of our authors to reflect on this and share their remarks below.

“Early generations of white property-owning men told stories of black inferiority to justify slavery. Later generations cast black men as sexual predators to justify Jim Crow and residential segregation. Politicians, most recently Donald Trump, told myths about the ghetto America created and still maintains. Inferior, nigger, rapist, thug. Such rhetoric was critical to maintaining supremacist institutions, and each time this nation seemed to dismantle a peculiar, black-subordinating institution, it constructed a new one. Four hundred years on, the past is not past.”—Sheryll Cashin, Loving: Interracial Intimacy in America and the Threat to White Supremacy

“By 1619, when enslaved Africans were sold to English colonizers in Jamestown, Virginia, the 15,000 Indigenous Powhatan Confederacy had been decimated, survivors forced to the margins of the homeland in a decade of genocidal attacks on their villages and farm lands, their fields of corn, beans, and squash turned into commercial agriculture—plantations of tobacco to be worked by the enslaved. The original crimes against humanity—genocide and slavery—were thereby baked into the founding of what would become the United States.”—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz,An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

“Last week, images taken at the farm of the current GOP leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, featured a group of white boys smiling as they surrounded, choked, and groped a cardboard cut-out of one of the newest congressional members elected to the House of Representatives—a woman of color, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. The photograph captures everything that is wrong with America and its current administration, as it spotlights the national legacy of enslavement, white supremacy, racist violence, and misogyny. The GOP response, which attempted to depict the boys as victims once citizens rebuked their conduct, summons the willful, self-excusing denial enslavers relied upon to dismiss the humanity of Africans. 400 years later, that kind of reasoning jeopardizes US democracy; yet that we have unabashedly diverse, progressive women in Congress contains answers for the country’s way forward past bigotry, violence, and political corruption.”—Kali N. Gross, A Black Women’s History of the United States

“More than a dozen of my ancestors were enslaved. The youngest was sold away from her mother at the age of nine. As I contemplate the 400th anniversary of slavery in North America, I am abhorred. Millions of descendants are permanently scarred by this historical harm and the racism it inflamed. America has a race wound that will never be healed until contemporary society comes to terms with the past. As we endure the latest politically-driven assaults on our moral values, we must resist descent into an abyss of hate. I am hopeful that the commemoration of the signal moment when African people were first sold into bondage at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619 will inspire a wake-up call that leads toward a society in which ALL people are treated equally and with respect. As Alice Walker said, ‘Healing begins where the wound was made.’”—Sharon Leslie Morgan, Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade

“The twenty-plus enslaved Africans who arrived in Virginia aboard the White Lion in 1619 were the first victims of an enduring national nightmare. The 400th anniversary of that momentous arrival provides an excellent opportunity for soul-searching about the meaning and legacy of slavery in America’s past. Slave ships are ghost ships that haunt us still. It is high time to repair the deep and violent damage they have done, and continue to do, to all generations of Americans, past and present.”—Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History

Robin DiAngelo Talking White Fragility in My Town, with Security Guardstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa8833022ad3e23443200b2019-02-12T12:31:19-05:002019-02-14T09:01:50-05:00By Thomas Norman DeWolf | I looked forward to Dr. Robin DiAngelo coming to the town where I live, Bend, Oregon, since her appearance was announced a few months ago by The Nancy R. Chandler Visiting Scholar Program of Central Oregon Community College (COCC). She was the featured speaker for this year’s Season of Nonviolence. I’m a big fan of her work, and we share a publisher: Beacon Press. I’ve not had the opportunity to see her present until now. I reserved tickets for her Wednesday evening presentation as well as her workshop the following morning. I attended with several friends, members of our local Coming to the Table affiliate group.Beacon Broadside

I looked forward to Dr. Robin DiAngelo coming to the town where I live, Bend, Oregon, since her appearance was announced a few months ago by The Nancy R. Chandler Visiting Scholar Program of Central Oregon Community College (COCC). She was the featured speaker for this year’s Season of Nonviolence. I’m a big fan of her work, and we share a publisher: Beacon Press. I’ve not had the opportunity to see her present until now. I reserved tickets for her Wednesday evening presentation as well as her workshop the following morning. I attended with several friends, members of our local Coming to the Table affiliate group.

I’ve read Dr. DiAngelo’s New York Times bestseller, White Fragility, and consider it one of the “must read” books for white people to become more fully aware of our own “stuff” around race, how we perpetuate it, and how we become “fragile” in defending ourselves against charges of racism. My coauthor Jodie Geddes and I include White Fragility in the Recommended Reading section of our new Little Book of Racial Healing.

“I don’t want you to understand me better. I want you to understand yourselves. Your survival has never depended on your knowledge of white culture. In fact, it’s required your ignorance.”—Ijeoma Oluo, 2017

From this early slide, Dr. DiAngelo spent an hour and a half naming what white people desperately need to know and acknowledge, and what so few of us do. She explained what white fragility is:

If you are white and reading this post, please read White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Check out a similar presentation to what she shared in our town on YouTube. She names the problems, the wounds, the challenges, the racism. She points out that in North America, “we live in a society that is deeply separate and unequal by race.” She doesn’t couch things in comforting words. In fact, her book and presentations are decidedly uncomfortable for most white people, because we haven’t done our work in understanding our own connection to racism, its perpetuation, and its impact on all people of color.

So, that’s your homework, my white friends.

But my main purpose in writing this essay is to ponder the meaning(s) of the presence of the security guards.

I sat in the third row with several friends in the sanctuary of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. The presentation was moved from Central Oregon Community College to accommodate more people. Her presentations both filled completely, plus waiting lists. When the event began and Dr. DiAngelo was introduced, a tall, strong, white man in uniform stood at the front of the room on the left. Another stood to the right. They looked out at the gathered crowd with serious looks on their faces. They never moved; never showed any emotion or response to anything Dr. DiAngelo said. A few more security guards were stationed elsewhere throughout the sanctuary. During her talk, she shared that she received a death threat last week. Well, I thought, that explains the security guards.

At the conclusion of Dr. DiAngelo’s presentation, one of the guards moved to stand a few feet to her left as she sat on the front edge of the stage to talk with attendees and sign copies of her book. He didn’t move. He didn’t blink. No nonsense. Deadly serious.

To the friends I sat next to, including an African American man, I said at the conclusion of her presentation, “I found it really disturbing to have the security guards standing there throughout her talk.”

“I could hardly listen to what she had to say,” my friend replied. “I’m black and he’s a cop.”

I stared at him for a moment, shook my head, and said, “I realize that as disturbing as it is for me, it is so much more for you. In all honesty, I was thinking this is completely unnecessary here. Nothing bad will happen in Bend, Oregon. Especially not in this church. But of course, it can. And my inclination to think otherwise highlights my own racial blinders.”

“This is what I need you and other white people to understand,” said my friend. “This is the impact that I deal with every day.”

I walked over to one of the organizers of the event. I learned the college had received messages from close to a dozen people who were very upset that COCC would bring Robin DiAngelo to town. Very upset. Enough so, apparently, that a team of security guards was hired and was very visible.

After most everyone had left, I spoke to one of the security guards who had been positioned at the front of the room. I asked him how he felt about needing to be there. He started sharing what sounded like a “company line” of just doing his job, etc., etc., and I interrupted.

“What I’m asking is about you personally. How do you feel inside that we live in a town where your presence is needed for an event like this?”

He looked into my eyes, then. It felt like he was really seeing me. “There are some really angry people in the world. They can cause a lot of damage. It’s too bad, but I’m glad we can help make sure everyone stays safe.”

I appreciate the event organizer and the security guard being open with me. Their words remind me of my own blindness to what goes on in our world . . . in my town. White people unwilling or unable to see our own stuff. White people willing to use violence—in letters to a local college, or in acts of violence—to avoid understanding and admitting that we are the problem. White people are the problem. In a nation founded on racism and white supremacy (the enslavement, murder, rape, and centuries of abuse of African people, the annihilation and forced removal of Indigenous people, the violence directed at, and theft of land of Mexican people, and so much more)—the foundational elements in the creation of the United States—white fragility is very much alive and well today, causing ongoing harm, and sometimes violent death, to people of color.

Let me be as clear with my readers as Dr. DiAngelo was with us that night. It is up to white people to understand that our ancestors created racism. We have inherited it. Our denial and deflection and fragility perpetuate it. It is on us to eradicate it.

Beacon Press Authors and Staff Reflect on the Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b8d2e8004b970c2018-04-04T05:04:08-04:002018-04-04T00:03:32-04:00Today, on the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, we honor his legacy. We reached out to some of our authors and staff members to reflect on the impact of his global vision for social justice and his tireless work in the civil rights movement. We share their commemorative responses with you below.Beacon Broadside

As US Marshal Cato Ellis serves an injunction on MLK, King and his aides (l to r), Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, James Orange and Bernard Lee, share a laugh to lighten the mood.

Today, on the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, we honor his legacy. We reached out to some of our authors and staff members to reflect on the impact of his global vision for social justice and his tireless work in the civil rights movement. We share their commemorative responses with you below.

***

“Although I was only fourteen at the time, and an immigrant kid at that, I will never forget, can never forget, the day Dr. King was assassinated. As we sat in shock around the TV, watching footage of his speeches and rallies, we felt certain that the entire world would honor and celebrate his memory, though we also knew some Americans would work violently to destroy his legacy. Even though I never heard him speak in person, I feel lucky over the years to have heard his speeches from time to time on audio and video, and most especially for the gift of his profoundest thoughts in his writings. Seeing Beacon become the curator of his works in print has been the greatest privilege of my career in publishing.”

—Helene Atwan, Beacon Press, Director

“On the day of his assassination, Martin Luther King, Jr. was widely ‘buked’ and scorned by the mainstream media and even other activists for his insistence that the civil rights and human rights agenda was unfinished. Much of the importance of Martin Luther King, Jr. lies in the work Coretta did to uphold his legacy after his assassination. The Martin Luther King National Holiday and the Humphrey-Hawkins bill are some often overlooked examples. Another example is her support of LGBT concerns. She also did everything she could in the Poor People’s Campaign, Martin’s goal of eroding economic inequality that still eludes us. Martin and Coretta left us the ingredients for success in movements: be persistent, willing to sacrifice, and stand by principle. A movement must have moral authority. Now, as then, the media won’t cover you if you don’t do keep on doing something. Someone has to go through the fire each time to make progressive change.”

—Mary Frances Berry, History Teaches Us to Resist: How Progressive Movements Have Succeeded in Challenging Times

“The assassination of Dr. King was an attempt to kill the righteous movement for Black freedom. He was a beacon among many leaders, and his legacy lives through the mass work of everyday people in today’s movement for Black lives fighting for racial, economic, and gender justice.”

“Rev. King’s words in his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, “. . . that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood,” inspired the founding of Coming to the Table and its Vision for the United States “. . . of a just and truthful society that acknowledges and seeks to heal from the racial wounds of the past—from slavery and the many forms of racism it spawned.” CTTT brings together the descendants of people who were enslaved and the descendants of people who were enslavers who wish to acknowledge and heal the traumatic, historic, unhealed wounds from racism that are rooted in the history of slavery in the US. Those of us who regularly come together at the Table are exceedingly grateful for the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. May we continue to work together to realize his Dream.”

—Thomas Norman DeWolf, Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade

“As the child of a time when African Americans were relegated to the ‘back of the bus’ on all social and economic indicators, Rev. King was a guiding light toward the ‘promised land.’ His exemplary leadership of nonviolent civil disobedience resonates profoundly today as America falls headlong into an abyss of moral decline. In commemorating his assassination, we need to remember that social equality requires courage to obtain and vigilance to sustain. Rev. King gave wings to our dreams. Let us not forget to fly!”

—Sharon Leslie Morgan, Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade

“Martin Luther King Jr was so many things—a civil rights leader, an African American hero, a paragon of nonviolence, and perhaps the most important American figure of the twentieth century. To these, I would like to add another title: Interfaith leader. King learned from and partnered with people of a variety of faith traditions. He spoke of Gandhi’s influence on him as second only to that of Jesus. He marched arm and arm with Rabbi Herschel in Selma. He was turned against the Vietnam War by a Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. He quoted from different religious sources in his essays, public talks, and religious sermons. Recovering the part of King that built Interfaith bridges is essential inspiration and guidance for our era of religious conflict, tension, and polarization.”

—Eboo Patel, Acts of Faith

“The first time I heard Dr. King’s voice was when I was seven or eight years old, and new to the US, and I somehow selected a record to play which included his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. I had never heard a voice like that and was transfixed, never imagining that decades later I’d have the great privilege to work on a series of books, The King Legacy, which featured his writings, lectures, and sermons.

King’s legacy means multiple things to me, but one of the most crucial lessons I’ve learned from him is that in life you have to be your own beacon, regardless of public opinion. It is now becoming more widely known that towards the end of his life, King was struggling—and that public opinion had, in many ways, turned against him. White Americans and a number of people in the civil rights movement were critical of his stance against the Vietnam War. But in spite of being out of favor, in spite of mind-numbing pressure and ill health, Dr. King persisted. King’s legacy is showing us, through his life, exactly what commitment looks like in action. In the new book, Redemption, Joseph Rosenbloom writes that after King’s death at age thirty-nine, Coretta Scott King spoke of the covenant King had made with himself: “that, by sacrificing himself, dying if necessary, for a cause that was ‘right and just,’ his life would end in the most redemptive way possible.” This is why, for me and many others, King’s legacy will always be something to be inspired by and to aspire to.”

—Gayatri Patnaik, Beacon Press, Editorial Director

“What does the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. mean to me? Candidly, I would say that his dramatic life as an agent of virtuous social change inspired me to write a book about him. That’s a way that his legacy has influenced me directly.

But I would add that his example has influenced me profoundly in another way. His is a legacy that affirms the potential for one individual to shape the course of history by means of the power of his words, courage, and principled commitment to a great cause. That legacy has sustained my faith in American democracy and guided me as a lodestar in my own desire to lead a life of social value.”

“It’s time to reclaim the legacy of Dr. King, in all its complexities, with all of the contradictions of this amazing, bold, visionary, evolving—and flawed—modern-day prophet.

No, not the feel-good King of ‘I Have a Dream’ fame standing at the Lincoln Memorial. Rather, the King who called out the hypocritical clergy for claiming to support the movement while criticizing the impatience of civil rights activists. The King who defiantly called America a sick nation. The King who was unafraid to name the racism of the north, as well as of the south. The King who spoke about the intertwined triplets of evil—racism, economic oppression, and militarism.”

“The more I read and research Dr. King, the more I am humbled by how expansive his vision was and how much I have yet to learn about him. To me, one way to honor him on April 4 is to sit in his actual writings—not in pithy statements or short quotations, but in his books and full essays so that we might encounter the reach of his thinking.”

—Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History

Bridging the Ancestors to the Present Generations: A Black History Month Reading Listtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301bb09f5fa82970d2018-02-23T17:27:03-05:002018-02-23T17:27:03-05:00Black History Month is the time that connections need to be made between the ancestors of Black heritage and the living inheritors. As educator Christopher Emdin wrote on our blog, the stories of past battles should never be told as if they are over or conquered. The stories are alive and playing out today. The connections are more powerful when they’re grounded in the context of history. In the spirit of Emdin’s observations, we’re offering a list of recommending reading to bridge the past with the present.Beacon Broadside

Black History Month is the time that connections need to be made between the ancestors of Black heritage and the living inheritors. As educator Christopher Emdin wrote on our blog, the stories of past battles should never be told as if they are over or conquered. The stories are alive and playing out today. Seeing the connections between the past and the present gives us the context that enriches our history. In the spirit of Emdin’s observations, we’re offering the following list of recommending reading.

Telling the stories of African American domestic workers, scholar and activist Premilla Nadasen resurrects the little-known history of domestic worker activism in the 1960s and 1970s, offering new perspectives on race, labor, feminism, and organizing.

NAACP Image Award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects the national myth-making around the civil rights movement, revealing its complex reality, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of its vision.

In his final book, Martin Luther King, Jr. lays out his thoughts, plans, and dreams for America’s future. He demands an end to global suffering, asserting that humankind—for the first time—has the resources and technology to eradicate poverty.

Sharon Leslie Morgan, a Black woman from Chicago’s South Side, and Thomas Norman DeWolf, a white man from rural Oregon, embark on a three-year journey of racial reconciliation by confronting the unhealed wounds of slavery.

Historian Daina Berry has written the first book to explore the economic value of enslaved people through every phase of their lives—including preconception, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, the senior years, and death—in the early American domestic slave trade.

Award-winning journalist Joseph Rosenbloom gives us an intimate look at the last thirty-one hours of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life as he seeks to revive the nonviolent civil rights movement and push to end poverty in America.

In his coming-of-age memoir, pop music critic and culture journalist Rashod Ollison tells his story of growing up Black and gay in central Arkansas while searching for himself and his distant father through soul music.

Award-winning writer Angela Jackson delves deep into the cultural and political force of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks, in celebration of her hundredth birthday.

Beacon Authors Speak Truth to Trump on Inauguration Daytag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b7c8cba5ba970b2017-01-20T08:50:48-05:002017-01-24T10:14:44-05:00Donald Trump gets sworn in today as commander in chief. His approval rating speaks to the myriad doubts, concerns, and fears many have about what he and his administration will do during his term in the White House. We reached out to a few of our authors to ask if they wanted to share what they want Trump to know, understand or beware of. On Inauguration Day, we share their responses with you. Beacon Broadside

Donald Trump gets sworn in today as commander in chief. His approval rating speaks to the myriad doubts, concerns, and fears many have about what he and his administration will do during his term in the White House. We reached out to a few of our authors to ask if they wanted to share what they want Trump to know, understand or beware of. On Inauguration Day, we share their responses with you.

***

“Mr. Trump, pushing an agenda to repeal health care, build walls, and stoke racism and xenophobia is not only illegitimate; it’s also a violation of our deepest moral and constitutional principles. I would urge you to repent and choose a legitimate path of love, justice, and equal protection for all.”—Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear

“Dear President Trump:

In the breakneck, tweet-by-tweet pace of the presidential campaign, one of your comments did not get the coverage it deserved: that it was ‘outrageous’ for New York City to have reached a $41 million settlement with the five African American teenagers who were wrongfully convicted of rape in the infamous Central Park Jogger case. You continue to insist, against all evidence—including DNA found inside the victim and the confession of the actual rapist—that they are guilty. This dogged stance alarms those of us who care deeply about justice—for the accused and for the victims alike. Those young men were all innocent. So, too, are tens of thousands of other men and women currently languishing in prison, with no one to help them. It is my fervent hope that you have the ability to reexamine your beliefs. We have a crime problem in this country: we lock up the wrong people.”—Lara Bazelon, The Last Shackle: Harm, Healing and Redemption in Wrongful Conviction Cases (forthcoming)

“Since you can’t count on the decreased turnout in a few blue states that gave you the presidency to insure your reelection, perhaps you should think ahead and embrace some progressive policies on health care, immigration, and other hot-button issues.”—Mary Frances Berry, Five Dollars and a Pork Chop Sandwich: Vote Buying and the Corruption of Democracy

“The most urgent problem facing our country and our planet is climate change, because any other decision, policy, or action could be changed by future presidents or generations, but climate change, if not slowed, halted, or reversed now, will be the end of all of us.”—Aviva Chomsky, Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

“I have no particular advice for the incoming president, only reminders for myself that others may find useful—including the incoming president, were he to choose to listen: 1) remain committed to what lifts us all up; 2) support people who are particularly at risk in a world currently managed by those who live in, and spread, fear; 3) stick with the peacebuilders; 4) listen; 5) trust your heart; 6) know that we will make it through challenging times and will be stronger for the experience; and 7) most important: live in love—always.”—Thomas Norman DeWolf, Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade

“Be aware: there are a lot of us nasty women out here ready to take your misogynist ass down.”—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

“Dear Mr. Trump:

You’ve said the US invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Please spare the Middle East and the rest of the world any similar or worse ‘mistakes’ during your hopefully brief tour of duty as ‘commander in chief.’”—Steve Early, Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City

“America relentlessly yearns to be ‘great,’ and our success or failure tends to hinge on one factor: when we pit ourselves against each other, demonizing and dehumanizing entire categories of Americans, we fail, but when we recognize that Americans of every color, creed, and culture possess strengths, and when we draw upon those virtues in common purpose, our greatness as a nation shines through.”—Rev. Elizabeth M. Edman, Queer Virtue: What LGBTQ People Know About Life and Love and How It Can Revitalize Christianity

“I have written about undiagnosed and very real traumas that folks of color experience in this country. I’ve highlighted undiagnosed forms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the forms of a Poor Teaching in Schools’ Disorder and a Post Trayvon (Martin) Stress Disorder. Presently, there is a President Trump Stress Disorder. A large segment of our country feels traumatized. Our Muslim brothers and sisters feel attacked. Our immigrant colleagues are fearful. Our young people are disillusioned. This is a real and ongoing trauma, and we must treat it as such by working together on it over time. The first step in this process is recognizing that what people are feeling is real. We cannot move forward with a new presidency or a new secretary of education without understanding that things have been said and done that have hurt people. Painting all Muslims as criminals or all public schools as ineffective is painful to those who fight hard to be more than a flawed and often grossly inaccurate stereotype. This pain becomes trauma when it isn’t acknowledged and people are fixed into categories they are unable to escape from because those who hold power would rather see a caricature than a real person. When Betsy DeVos talks about urban public schools without seeing any value in the institutions or the youth that attend them, she sends a message that turns youth into commodities that only have value when they leave their neighborhoods. We cannot talk about moving forward as a nation without acknowledging our past mistakes. We cannot lead schools if we view young people as inherently flawed and in need of saving. We cannot heal as a nation without acknowledging the ways that we impose trauma on the most vulnerable among us.”—Christopher Emdin, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…and the Rest of Y’all Too

“I want our incoming president to appreciate that words have consequences. Speaking offhand, giving vent to prejudices and biases, rhetorically dancing around irrational propositions are all the equivalent of juggling a motorized saw.”—Bill Fletcher Jr., “They’re Bankrupting Us!” And 20 Other Myths About Unions

“About the idea to ‘privatize’ Indian lands: it’s one of the oldest tricks in the book to force Native American assimilation; it didn't work before, and it won't work now.”—Dina Gilio-Whitaker, “All the Real Indians Died Off”: And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans

“America deserves a commander in chief who is committed to protecting our women and men in the armed forces from sexual assault and all crimes. Renounce statements you’ve made excusing your own sexually predatory words and behavior, and pledge to charge and prosecute all cases of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment in the military.”—Anita Hill, Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home

“Dear President Trump:

Don’t cut even one hair on the head of Social Security! You said you would not cut it during your campaign, and tens of millions of Americans expect you to keep your promise. In fact, you should expand the Social Security monthly benefit. Retired Americans deserve no less.”—Steven Hill, Expand Social Security Now! How to Ensure Americans Get the Retirement They Deserve

“Since we know you are very aware of the need to protect and defend ‘my African American,’ please take time in your inaugural to explain how you will work to fulfill Dr. King’s vision for achieving peace, justice, and racial equality through love, forgiveness, and nonviolence.”—Michael Honey, editor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “All Work Has Dignity”

“As I recoil against your ascension to power as president of the United States—the beacon of democratic principles in the Free World—I want you to know that right-thinking Americans will never succumb and say ‘Heil’ to a deplorably ignorant, hypocritical, immoral, xenophobic, Twitter-obsessed, megalomaniacal kleptocrat who astounds us with egregious promotion of intolerance, divisiveness, disrespect, and prevarication, because ‘We the People’ are better than that!”—Sharon Leslie Morgan, Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade

“As a primary-care physician, I worry about the immediate health-care crisis that will occur when twenty million people lose their insurance and, thus, access to medical care. The ramifications will be vast and deadly. I’m struggling to recall when a president of the United States ever deliberately put so many Americans in harm’s way. This is more than the number of Americans who were sent to Vietnam or even to World War II. Take a moment, Mr. Trump, to imagine how you would feel if your family suddenly lost access to medical care. And now think about your fellow citizens. Is this really making America great again?”—Danielle Ofri, What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear

“Trump, you’re in way over your comb-over with this position, but I hope some glimmer of your humanity shines through anyway and does not implode what’s left of American democracy.”—Rashod Ollison, Soul Serenade: Rhythm, Blues & Coming of Age Through Vinyl

“Though you campaigned as the candidate of working Americans, you have nominated a Labor secretary who is anti-union, anti-minimum wage, believes workers don’t deserve breaks, and has sworn to replace workers with robots if he can—and you are working with Republicans in Congress who have vowed to cut Medicare and Medicaid. So you need to show us exactly how you plan to make life better for the American worker.”—Annelise Orleck, Storming Caesar’s Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty

“Dear Mr. Trump:

American Pluralism—respect for diverse identities, relationships between different communities, and collective commitment to the common good—is one of the jewels of our civilization. Will you cherish it in your rhetoric and protect it with your policies?”—Eboo Patel, Interfaith Leadership: A Primer

“Dear Donald Trump:

Unlike past presidents who cared about the legacy of the office and tried to maintain the dignity of the role, it is clear that you only care about your power and exercising it no matter the consequences, and so there isn’t much to say to you. Instead, I wish to ask this nation, especially those in power and with privilege, to stand up, be courageous, and reject Trump and all the evil he stands for!”—Dr. Stacey Patton, Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America

“Donald Trump is the most ableist presidential candidate in modern US history. He routinely insults people by mocking real or perceived differences in bodies and mind (the Serge Kovaleski incident, fat shaming, calling Marlee Matlin the r-word, and countless other examples), but the real problem is that he’s likely to sign off on policies that will make America demonstrably worse for millions of disabled individuals. The potential repeal of the ACA threatens so many lives, including people who are merely not disabled yet, but his appointees are also likely to undermine attempts to better integrate communities, work, and school. But now he’s president, so I’d just tell him this: His supporters are as likely to become disabled as anyone else. They will need the help of a strong federal government eager to defend their rights. Time to get to work.”—David Perry, author of a forthcoming book on the criminalization of people with disabilities

“Benjamin Lay, the radical abolitionist dwarf, spoke truth to power in 1738: beware rich men who ‘poison the World for Gain.’ The roots of resistance are old and deep.”—Marcus Rediker, The Fearless Benjamin Lay

“You can’t fix the economy if you don’t expand the legal rights and benefits of all workers, including those doing independent contracting, gig work, part-time and temporary jobs, outsourcing, domestic and farm work, and day labor.”—Jonathan Rosenblum, Beyond $15: Immigrant Workers, Faith Activists, and the Revival of the Labor Movement

“Fourteen states had new voter restrictions on the books for 2016. The Electoral College, created to protect the slave states, gives disproportionate weight to smaller, whiter states. 6.1 million Americans were disfranchised due to felon disfranchisement laws on the books in many states. John Lewis questioned the legitimacy of Trump’s election given the influence of Russia—but much closer to home, our democracy was hacked by these new laws and old practices.”—Jeanne Theoharis, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

“In immigration, as in many other areas, America deserves a president with the ability to solve issues from a human rights perspective, beyond politics or partisanship. That’s the kind of leader we need, because that’s the kind of country we are meant to be. This is your moment, Mr. Trump: be that leader. We can still be that country.”—Eileen Truax, Dreamers: An Immigrant Generation’s Fight for Their American Dream

“Muslim Americans are as true and proud as any other Americans, and the affiliation of an entire faith with the evil of terrorism is one of the cruelest injustices of our age.”—Rafia Zakaria, The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan

Whitelash and Blacklashtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b8d23a38cb970c2016-11-16T11:32:19-05:002016-11-16T11:32:56-05:00By Sharon Leslie Morgan and Thomas Norman DeWolf
Deep, authentic relationships with people we’ve been raised to see as “other” are key to understanding and reversing the impacts of racism and other forms of intolerance and inequity, and the misuse of power, and privilege. For the two of us, there is solace in knowing that someone shares our beliefs and commitment to social justice. We have built a friendship over the years that helps sustain us. We can talk with and lean on each other in times of madness and sadness, as we did on election night and surely in days to come.Beacon Broadside

A week has passed since a man who repeatedly espoused intolerance, racism, sexism, and white/male supremacy, and incited violence against those who opposed him, was elected President of the United States. I still can’t wrap my head around it.

The president-elect has now appointed the former head of Breitbart News as his chief strategist and senior counselor; a man and an organization seen as the flagship of the so-called alt-right; people who espouse extreme anti-Semitic and white supremacist beliefs. This appointment is consistent with his entire campaign: a confirmation that intolerance, bigotry, and misogyny will be key policy components of the new administration. I’ve felt for several years that we have been making progress in the United States regarding issues of race, gender and religious tolerance and acceptance; equality, justice, respect and peace for all people. I want to believe we still are.

But…the election….

When I woke up Wednesday morning, my first thoughts were of our two granddaughters who would soon wake up and prepare to go to school. How do I explain to them that the man who incessantly spouts vulgar words they aren’t allowed to use, who is a horrible role model for children and adults, will now become President of the United States and leader of the free world? I shared on my blog what we talked about: intolerance and kindness; fear and love; as well as the responsibilities we have to support our values, our nation, and each other.

As a white man, I believe it is critically important that I, and all white people, listen to those who have been marginalized, people the president-elect and many of his supporters have targeted. Listen to what Van Jones said about Surviving the Whitelash. Watch Dave Chappelle’s monologue on Saturday Night Live. Listen to teachers who have students from other countries who are terrified they will be deported. Read about horrible, abusive acts committed since the election—perpetrated by people emboldened by the president-elect. The level of fear about what may happen soon, and for many years after, is understandably quite high.

Speaking specifically to white people, it is important for us first to listen to those who feel most vulnerable now. Then ask what we can do to support them. How can I be an effective ally? What can I do to help prevent the implementation of policies and actions that create more harm; that not only don’t “make America great again,” but, in fact, are contrary to the ideals upon which this nation was founded and has never truly lived up to. Based on what we’ve witnessed over the past year, and in the past week, we must remain vigilant and committed to truth, justice, equality, and peace.

Blacklash: from Sharon Leslie Morgan

I could not believe my eyes as I watched the election returns on television. I stayed awake until the sun came up trying process the realization that the unthinkable happened; that the forward strides generations of people struggled and died for went swirling down a drain of ignorance and bigotry. I spent the day in a stupor, barely able to get out of bed. A week later, the media and sycophants that helped propel Trump to victory are mobilizing to normalize his image. I am in shock as the travesty continues to unfold with the selection of a rogue’s cabinet of morally reprehensible hypocrites and race-baiters.

Like Tom, I was with my grandchildren during the days after the election. We had a similar conversation about human values, but mine was more focused on safety. The wave of terror that has been legitimized by Trump and is being exploited by his followers is a clear and present danger to the ones I love. My heart is heavy. I am sad, angry and afraid.

I get it that people are mad...mad at the system. I agree that the ENTIRE system is flawed and dysfunctional. But, Trump is NOT the solution. Rather, he is the embodiment of everything that is wrong. Anyone who thinks otherwise is guilty of cognitive dissonance that is apocalyptic. It is devastating to witness the fall of America into the hands of a megalomaniac on a mission to “make America great again” by undermining absolutely every principle of decency and fairness. Under Trump, things will get worse...much worse. The one-tenth of one percent will keep getting richer...phenomenally so. The rest of us will become even more impoverished through the loss of our social safety nets. The people who voted for him will be dismayed as he reveals his true nature as a man who cares nothing for anyone but himself.

I hope all right-thinking people will unite to resist and protest in every possible way. I am glad protesters are marching in the streets in cities across the land. I long to see a million women turn up in D.C. on inauguration day. I implore people to close their wallets and refuse to patronize Trump-owned businesses. I applaud sanctuary cities and pray they stand firm in their resolve to give refuge to undocumented immigrants. I need the ACLU and the SPLC to remain vigilant. I caution the Democratic Party to do some deep soul searching and find a strong voice of resistance in Congress. I pray Republicans will disavow the hateful rhetoric that put them in control. I beg that world leaders not give in to threats and intimidation. I urge EVERYONE to speak up and speak out.

Donald Trump is NOT my president. I cringe at the thought of the Trump family defiling the White House with their presence. I cannot imagine Melania Trump as the first lady of the United States. I feel as though we have experienced a coup d’état, and the only thing that will reverse it is a revolution.

NOW WHAT?

Deep, authentic relationships with people we’ve been raised to see as “other” are key to understanding and reversing the impacts of racism and other forms of intolerance and inequity, and the misuse of power and privilege. For the two of us, there is solace in knowing that someone shares our beliefs and commitment to social justice. We have built a friendship over the years that helps sustain us. We can talk with and lean on each other in times of madness and sadness, as we did on election night and surely in days to come.

It is crucial that we take whatever action we can to support Black Lives Matter, Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), and the many other organizations that champion the rights of women, members of the LGBTQ community, Muslims, disabled people, and immigrants. The time is right for initiatives such as the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation effort that the W.K. Kellogg Foundation will launch in 2017 in partnership with more than one hundred public, private, and non-profit organizations throughout the United States. We also urge you to get involved with organizations like Coming to the Table that “provides leadership, resources and a supportive environment for all who wish to acknowledge and heal wounds from racism that is rooted in the United States’ history of slavery.” CTTT’s focus on establishing affiliate groups that create safe spaces for people to gather together to hear each other’s stories, to learn about each other, and to build relationships and understanding, is a critically important resource in the days and years ahead.

Our training in Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) teaches that humans, when confronted with danger, have an immediate impulse to either flee or fight. We can’t flee because this is our country. We live here. We have no choice but to endure whatever comes. But that does not mean we should go silently. Use your voice. Do what you can. We must not abrogate our responsibility to our children, grandchildren, and future generations. Through it all, we must realize how much we need each other. Now, more than ever, we must stand strong TOGETHER and not let the powers of darkness obliterate the light.

Reconciling the Double Helixtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b7c80c5d8c970b2016-01-25T12:34:24-05:002016-05-05T16:33:08-04:00By Sharon Leslie Morgan
As a genealogist, DNA has intrigued me ever since its first promotion as a consumer product in 2003. That was the year Dr. Rick Kittles launched African Ancestry, a company that specializes in uncovering the genetic origins of people of African descent. It marked twenty-eight years into my personal research into a family tree that winds from the backwoods of Mississippi and Alabama through a Great Migration terminus in Chicago. All along the way, one thing I longed to know more than anything else was the root of my continental African origins. This was in spite of the tangled morass of genes that include a copious assortment of Europeans that resulted in me looking more white than many white people I know.Beacon Broadside

As a genealogist, DNA has intrigued me ever since its first promotion as a consumer product in 2003. That was the year Dr. Rick Kittles launched African Ancestry, a company that specializes in uncovering the genetic origins of people of African descent. It marked twenty-eight years into my personal research into a family tree that winds from the backwoods of Mississippi and Alabama through a Great Migration terminus in Chicago. All along the way, one thing I longed to know more than anything else was the root of my continental African origins. This was in spite of the tangled morass of genes that include a copious assortment of Europeans that resulted in me looking more white than many white people I know.

This week, as I read The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome(Beacon Press, 2016) by Alondra Nelson, my curiosity was rewarded in spades. To say this book is fascinating would be a gross understatement. In a short 166 pages, Nelson deconstructs the double helix of DNA as she “tells the compelling, unexpected, and still unfolding story of how genetics came to rest at the center of our collective conversation about the troubled history of race in America.” In the process, she sheds light on the people, places, and subjects I have studied for a lifetime but never before been able to make adequate sense of in relation to my individual and communal genealogical mission.

Like many people, especially those engaged in genealogical research, my relentless quest is fueled by a longing to know: Who am I? Where did I come from? What were my ancestors like? What have I inherited from my predecessors? What does that mean in our world today? Nelson addresses that longing by saying “Genetics has become a medium through which the unsettled past is reconciled.” And then, she goes further: “…DNA has become an agent in the politics of repair and reconciliation; it is sought after as communal balm and social glue, as a burden of proof and a bridge across time.”

As far as I know, African Americans are the only people in the world who were transmogrified. We started off as people rooted in established communities bonded by family ties, shared culture and language. Via the Middle Passage and its ensuing horrors on American shores, we ended up as dehumanized chattel, disconnected and lost from our origins.

After reading Nelson’s book, I wanted to know even more. Thanks to Beacon Press, I had the opportunity to interview the author for further insights.

On her personal genealogical efforts, Nelson said, “The results of my family research have been both enlightening and heartening. Ever since I was a little girl, I was the person in my family who was insatiably curious about genealogy and was willing to do the research. One great discovery was a profile in TheTimes-Picayune newspaper of my paternal great-great grandmother Cora on the occasion of her 100th birthday. I also learned more about my paternal Jamaican roots. My quest to find my ancestors is one of the inspirations that led me to become a scholar.”

On DNA, Nelson says: “Genetic testing is a different kind of knowledge and history from conventional genealogy. It may be complimentary to archival research, but the genetic and archival puzzle pieces don’t necessarily connect to one another.

“In my own case, I had my mitochondrial DNA analyzed and received an inferred connection to the Bamileke people of Cameroun. While this information hasn’t been transformative for me, it made me think a lot more about Cameroun and pay attention to current events there. I shared these results with my parents and my mother’s ensuing efforts led to our family being connected with a Camerounian family here in the United States.”

In spite of that positive outcome, “There is much to criticize about genetic ancestry testing companies, including a lack of transparency about their proprietary databases and the inability to verify or replicate results—a hallmark of scientific research. Consumers are left to accept companies’ claims as to the size and robustness of their databases and the relevance of their results. However, in my research, I found that the possibilities of what they offer imbue people with an incredible amount of hope.”

So what, I asked, is the outlook for how DNA can contribute to conversations about racial reconciliation? Nelson responded by saying, “In the reparations class action suit I write about, the courts want more specific genealogy than what genetic ancestry testing can currently offer. Getting to a place where there is not a gap between archival research and genetic testing would be a definite improvement. We may never be able to get over the technical hurdles, but the even more salient issues are historical amnesia and ideological barriers. The idea of racial reconciliation involves philosophical, ethical, and spiritual considerations and not merely technical ones. The era of plantation slavery was unjust and is cemented into very foundation of the United States. We need to be willing to have a national conversation that encompasses all of these facets—perhaps encouraged by legislation—that will allow social healing to take place.”

Nelson’s advice is: “Genealogy is one way to shine a bright light on racial slavery and its contemporary manifestations and to show that both whites and blacks share this bitter inheritance. Do your paper research and, if you are so inclined, get your genetic ancestry testing results. When genetic analysis of African diasporic remains were pioneered at the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan, many hoped that genetic testing might become a ‘public good’—available for free and disseminated to all who were interested. Maybe that is one way—with a transparent and robust scientific process and ethical safeguards in place—to catalyze this most necessary conversation.”

Like Nelson, DNA testing for family members who are direct line descendants of people I know were enslaved eventually took me back to Africa. One male line landed in the Mandinka tribe of West Africa. A female line traced back to the Makua tribe of the East. (Tom was disappointed in his testing because he did not find even “one drop” of African genes in his family tree.)

Even though my book was a profound and rewarding exercise in individual transformation, I still need a way forward for how to use my learnings for social benefit in support of my belief that we “empower our future by honoring our past.” Alondra Nelson has given wings to that ambition.

My disclaimer is that I continue to be paranoid about the possibilities of DNA being used as a pejorative measure of social value for black people. Knowing America’s history, it is not possible for me to unequivocally advise DNA testing for all.

The Broadside’s Greatest Hits: 2015 in Reviewtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b8d187f375970c2015-12-31T13:18:10-05:002015-12-31T13:18:10-05:002015 has been, to say the least, rather momentous, and continues to be as it draws to a close. We at Beacon Press are so grateful to our brilliant authors who have offered their time and insights to analyze and comment on this year's events. Their posts—with topics ranging from race to cultural or class dynamics and to the environment—have been, if you will, a true beacon for the Broadside. Before we bid farewell to 2015, we would like to share a collection of some our most-read posts. This list is by no means exhaustive. Make sure to peruse our archives. You can expect to see more thought-provoking essays and commentary from our contributors in 2016. Happy New Year!Beacon Broadside

2015 has been, to say the least, rather momentous, and continues to be as it draws to a close. We at Beacon Press are so grateful to our brilliant authors who have offered their time and insights to analyze and comment on this year's events. Their posts—with topics ranging from race to cultural or class dynamics and to the environment—have been, if you will, a true beacon for the Broadside. Before we bid farewell to 2015, we would like to share a collection of some our most-read posts. This list is by no means exhaustive. Make sure to peruse our archives. You can expect to see more thought-provoking essays and commentary from our contributors in 2016. Happy New Year!

Dunbar-Ortiz’s American Book Award-winning An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States chronicles four centuries of Native Americans actively resisting expansion of the US empire, colonialism, and the attendant structural injustices. Colonialism and its legacy of injustices, however, are still a part of the present as much as they are a part of our country’s past. In May, the new and admired Pope Francis announced the canonization of Junípero Serra, thereby venerating European colonization and genocide. Dunbar-Ortiz implores us to celebrate the insurgent actions of California’s Indigenous nations against Serra’s totalitarian order, not the oppressor.

For Nura Maznavi, attorney, writer, and co-editor of Salaam, Love: American Muslim Men on Love, Sex & Intimacy, Ramadan was a time when, as a child, she could pretend to be an adult. She insisted on fasting the entire month starting at the age of seven. Ramadan became more challenging as the years went on, but she never missed a day of fasting—until she became pregnant. This year, the second time around, Maznavi didn’t fast because she was nursing, and she didn’t feel bad about it. She found other ways of feeling the Ramadan spirit.

When you’re a new teacher, or one with years of experience, and you’re faced with disobedient children, unfriendly administrators, shortages of supplies, and demanding parents, how do you avoid the besieged teacher trap? How do you work with the pressures and expectations of the classroom while cultivating the practice of figuring out how your students can enjoy their time together more, how they can take on the wider world with curiosity, creativity, and zest? Robert Fried, author of The Passionate Teacher, lays out the foundation for educators to become the passionate teacher they want to be, the kind who can’t wait to get into the classroom.

Robert Oswald and Michelle Bamberber, authors of The Real Cost of Fracking, pored over all of one thousand pages of the EPA’s long-awaited study on the effects of hydraulic fracturing in the United States. News reports of the study claimed that fracturing was safe and did not jeopardize our water and water resources. Given the study’s wide coverage in the media, how did so many news outlets get the story so wrong? Well, as Oswald and Bamberger explain, only a select few actually read the study. Not only do they point us to specific details in the report about the dangers of fracking on our water, they also review the aftermath of the misinformation fed to the masses.

The publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman was, by and large, one of this year’s highly anticipated—and controversial—cultural milestones. Readers who had fallen in love with Atticus Finch as the heroic savior in To Kill a Mockingbird were shocked when confronted with an altogether contrary characterization of the man who had stood for racial justice. In Watchman, Lee gives us his back-story and shows Atticus as he always was, a lawyer groomed for white supremacy and racism in the Jim Crow South. Whitlock and Bronski, authors of Considering Hate, examine how and why Lee’s frank portrayal of Atticus challenges the white American literary imagination.

Texas made the headlines in October when schools across the state put some dodgy textbooks from McGraw-Hill Education on their curricula. The geography textbooks referred to African slaves as “workers” and completely downplayed slave owners’ brutal treatment of slaves with other linguistic sleights of hand. They, in effect, whitewashed American slavery history. What’s most disconcerting about this is that the textbooks were approved for Texas high schools. We at Beacon reached out to our authors who have written about American Slavery history to ask them for corrective reading. With recommendations from Mary Frances Berry, Thomas Norman DeWolf, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Anita Hill, Sharon Leslie Morgan, and Marcus Rediker, we were able to put together a robust list.

Watching Our Language: Recommended Reading on American Slavery Historytag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b7c7e52571970b2015-10-30T13:26:12-04:002015-10-30T13:14:05-04:00George Orwell’s 1984 taught us that language—and who uses it—truly does matter. In the case of educating Texan youth about American history, language matters a great deal. McGraw-Hill Education’s current geography textbook, approved for Texas high schools, refers to African slaves as “workers” in a chapter on immigration patterns. Other linguistic sleights of hand include using the passive voice to obscure slave owner’s brutal treatment of slaves. It appears we have a Ministry of Truth at work after all, just like the one where Orwell’s ill-fated hero Winston Smith worked, rewriting history. The fact is especially disconcerting, as Texas is the largest consumer of textbooks.Beacon Broadside

Source: New York Public Library

George Orwell’s 1984 taught us that language—and who uses it—truly does matter. In the case of educating Texan youth about American history, language matters a great deal. McGraw-Hill Education’s current geography textbook, approved for Texas high schools, refers to African slaves as “workers” in a chapter on immigration patterns. Other linguistic sleights of hand include using the passive voice to obscure slave owner’s brutal treatment of slaves. It appears we have a Ministry of Truth at work after all, just like the one where Orwell’s ill-fated hero Winston Smith worked, rewriting history. The fact is especially disconcerting, as Texas is the largest consumer of textbooks.

David Levin, president and chief executive of McGraw-Hill Education, has promised a revision of the textbook. The digital version and the next printed edition will reflect the Africans’ forced migration and enslavement. In the meantime, McGraw-Hill Education is sending stickers to cover up the “workers” passage. High school social-studies teachers will set aside the textbook for this subject and teach from other books. The fact remains, however, that the professionals and consultants enlisted for their expertise on the textbook whitewashed history.

Luckily, there is an abundance of rigorous scholarship on the history of American slavery. We asked our authors who have written on this issue for a list of books about the Atlantic Slave Trade that influenced their writing.

His Ancestors Were Slave Traders and Hers Were Slaves: What They Learned About Healing from a Roadtriptag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301bb083ae202970d2015-06-02T15:54:41-04:002015-06-02T15:54:41-04:00By Sharon Leslie Morgan and Thomas Norman DeWolf This post originally appeared in Yes! Magazine. We embarked upon a journey to test whether two people could come to grips with deep, traumatic, historic wounds and find healing. We had no...Beacon Broadside

We embarked upon a journey to test whether two people could come to grips with deep, traumatic, historic wounds and find healing. We had no idea where we would end up.

Sharon’s Story

I burst into tears in the parking lot of the Lowndes County Interpretive Center in rural Alabama. Tom and I were five days into the 6,000-plus mile healing journey that informedGather at the Table, the book we wrote about healing the many wounds Americans inherited from the legacy of slavery. We had just crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma where, in March 1965, John Lewis (now a 15-term U.S. congressman) and more than 600 protesters tried to begin a 54-mile march to Montgomery. On a day that came to be known as Bloody Sunday, Alabama state troopers confronted the peaceful marchers and viciously attacked them with billy clubs. I watched these events unfold on television as a 14-year-old child embraced in the warm comfort of my family home in Chicago.

My great-grandparents were enslaved in Lowndes County, Alabama, which is at the heart of the historic march route. They lived a lifetime of Bloody Sundays. My great-grandmother Rhoda Reeves Leslie was alive when I was a child. I knew her. I loved her. I had no concrete idea, until that very moment in the parking lot, what anguish she and other members of my family had suffered as slaves, and then as people who were terrorized by Jim Crow laws, disenfranchised from voting, and kept from becoming full citizens in the land of the free and the home of the brave. In 1965, there were zero black voters in Lowndes County because of voter suppression through poll taxes and intimidation. Even today, it is deeply impoverished. Tom's face morphed into a representation of all white people and everything they had done to people like me.

Tom's Story

I didn't know what to say. So I said nothing. I sat in the passenger seat next to Sharon while she sobbed. Twenty minutes earlier, on the drive from the Voting Rights Museum, I had asked her, What would you do if you had lived here then?

I would kill them, she said, staring straight ahead as she drove, clutching the steering wheel in a death grip. I watched the first tear roll down her cheek.

I am often accused of being a Kumbaya kind of guy. I believe seriously in love and peace and want everybody to get along. I also believe that people are born with a basic sense of humanity that can enable them to changenot just themselves but the communities in which they live. I know Sharon shares that belief, but it is sometimes hard to keep the faith.

We first met in 2008, through Coming to the Table, a nonprofit organization founded by the descendants of both slaveholders and enslaved people in partnership with the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. [Tom is currently executive director of Coming to the Table.] The founders were inspired by the vision of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his historic March on Washington speech that one day the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveholders will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. The work of Coming to the Table is to acknowledge and heal wounds from racism that are rooted in the United States history of slavery.

In 2009, Sharon and I embarked upon a journey to test whether two people- an African American woman from South Side Chicago who is descended from enslaved people, and a white man from central Oregon who is descended from the largest slave-trading dynasty in U.S. history could come to grips with deep, traumatic, historic wounds and find healing. We had no idea where we would end up. We were just lost souls looking for direction and relief.

So there we were, sitting in a car in Alabama, bearing witness to yet another example of the great American trauma that keeps all of us mired in the misery of racism. Grappling with that awareness isn't easy, especially when sitting next to a woman crying her heart out over something I couldn't totally comprehend.

The hard truth is that my face does represent the face of oppression. I'm white. I'm male. I'm heterosexual. I'm able-bodied. I was raised Christian in a middle-class home and community. Until the summer of 2001, when I joined members of the DeWolf family on a mission to retrace the triangle slave-trade route of our ancestors, I was blissfully unaware of my unearned privilege. On that journey I was exposed to horrific truths about the foundations upon which America is built and the systems that continue to benefit people who look like me and discriminate against people who look like Sharon.

In spite of that understanding, what Sharon said did not seem fair. I am not my slave-trading ancestors. I helped expose their sins when we made the PBS/POV documentary "Traces of the Trade" and when I wrote my first book, "Inheriting the Trade".

One great revelation along the way came from Coming to the Table co-founder Will Hairston, who said to me, Guilt is the glue that holds racism together. We build walls with bricks of denial to protect ourselves from feeling it. In the end, guilt is divisive and counterproductive. Instead of the destructive feeling of guilt, what I do feel is profound grief over the enormous damage done. I feel a responsibility to acknowledge and address the consequences of our historical inheritance. That is why I dedicate myself (and encourage other white people to do the same) to using my privilege to expose the truth and make a positive difference.

During the three years after that day in the parking lot, Sharon and I drove thousands more miles and waded ever deeper into the morass of history. Along the way, we laughed, cried, argued, and shared transformative experiences that changed the way we both look at the world. We subsequently participated in STAR trainings (Strategies for Trauma Awareness & Resilience) through CJP to seek ways to make sense of it all. Through STAR, we learned about terrifying social patterns exhibited by deeply traumatized societies and what we can do to heal their effects.

The hidden wound

In 1970, poet, essayist, and environmentalist Wendell Berry published The Hidden Wound, a 137-page essay on race and racism. He wrote: "[Racism] involves an emotional dynamic that has disordered the heart both of the society as a whole and of every person in the society." He said, "I want to know, as fully and exactly as I can, what the wound is and how much I am suffering from it. And I want to be cured; I want to be free of the wound myself, and I do not want to pass it on to my children. I know if I fail to make at least the attempt, I forfeit any right to hope that the world will become better than it is now."

A foundational American belief is that certain people are less than human, singled out for disdain, undeserving of respect, and certainly not entitled to equal representation in the American Dream. The short list of atrocities that define the African American experience shows those beliefs in action: African people were enslaved in all 13 original colonies. Ninety-five percent of all American trans-Atlantic slave-trading originated from northern ports. Rhode Island, home to the DeWolf slave traders, was responsible for 50 percent of it. More than two centuries of brutalization during slavery were followed by 100 years of Jim Crow. Slaves were formally liberated, but African Americans were subjected to the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan, lynching, and other atrocities. Beginning in 1910, in two waves over 60 years, more than 5 million people joined the Great Migration from the South. They sought opportunity in the promised land of the North, but found only a veneer of equality. The Red Summer of 1919, a wave of riots initiated by whites against blacks in both Northern and Southern cities, proved the point.

Today, relative to white people, people of color fall on the negative side of virtually all measurable social indicators. In 2014, the Pew Research Center reported that the median white household was worth $141,900, 12.9 times more than the typical black household, which was worth just $11,000. Poverty rates for African Americans are more than 160 percent higher; unemployment is double. White and black Americans use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates, but African Americans are incarcerated at 10 times the rate of whites for drug offenses. Seventy-six unarmed black people were killed by police from 1999 to 2014, including just in the last year Michael Brown (Missouri), Eric Garner (New York), and John Crawford (Ohio). According to ProPublicas analysis of federally collected data on fatal police shootings, young black males in recent years were at a far greater risk of being shot dead by police than their white counterparts 21 times greater.

Cycles of violence

The STAR program emerged in the aftermath of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks of September 11, 2001. As described in "STAR: The Unfolding Story 2001-2011", the Center for Justice and Peace building at Eastern Mennonite University and Church World Service partnered to create a training program for religious leaders and caregivers working to support traumatized communities. The program evolved into trainings that were useful to anyone working with traumatized individuals and communities. It is grounded in a multidisciplinary framework that integrates neurobiology, psychology, restorative justice, conflict transformation, human security, and spirituality. More than 7,000 people working in more than 60 locations around the world have received STAR training.

The illustration below of the Cycles of Violence shows how people typically respond to traumatic wounds. We become caught up in a seemingly infinite loop of victimhood and aggression that is fueled by reenactment. Our conscious and unconscious beliefs about how and why we've been harmed and who caused the harm often result in a desire for retribution. As STAR trainers say, hurt people hurt people. Traumatic wounds result from a variety of sources and impact individuals, families, communities, and societies. These impacts fester in wounds that have never healed like the legacies of slavery, racism, sexism, and religious intolerance. Trauma affects the well-being of the whole person: body, mind, and spirit.

No one can just get over traumatic wounds. That's not how our bodies and brains work. If we don't do the work we need to heal, we end up trapped in cycles of violence. But thats not inevitable. The STAR approach offers ways to break the cycles.

Recovering from trauma and building resilience

Without intervention, our thoughts and feelings become beliefs. Our beliefs direct our actions and inform the reality of our everyday lives. If we are stuck in cycles of violence, our thoughts, beliefs, and actions become mired in fear. Breaking cycles of violence and building resiliencerequires fully engaging our brains with the conscious intention of healing.

The actions that lead toward healing and reconciliation center on acknowledging the harm through mourning, confronting our fears, hearing the story of the Other, choosing to forgive, and incorporating principles of restorative justice in ways that proffer dignity for all who have been harmed by stressing responsibility and restitution.

The STAR approach connects personal and community healing with organizational and societal well-being. It rests at the foundation of the Coming to the Table approach to healing the lingering wounds that emanate from the American institution of slavery. The four interrelated activities involved in the Coming to the Table method are:

First: Researching, acknowledging, and sharing personal, family, and societal histories of race with openness and honesty. Truth and reconciliation commissions in countries like South Africa, Brazil, Colombia, and Canada are model attempts to reveal the whole truth of egregious wounds that afflict modern societies. They are typically combined with attempts to implement restorative justice to correct the wrongs.

Second: Connecting with others within and across racial lines in order to develop deep and accountable relationships. As an example, the original intent of the founders of Coming to the Table was to connect linked descendantspeople who have a joint history in slavery (i.e., descendants of slaves and their slaveholders)with a goal of engaging them in communication with one another and coming to terms with their shared history. In our own case, we are not as directly connected as that, but were able to find a way by making friends on purpose to cross the breach.

Third: Exploring ways to heal together. Support groups help people build meaningful relationships by sharing stories about traumatic experiences and responses. Rituals related to acknowledgement of the past help create connections between past and present in order to understand where harms originated, how they affect us in contemporary times, and how we can move forward to healing.

Fourth: The model challenges us to actively champion systemic change that supports repair and reconciliation between individuals, within families, and throughout society. The persistent inequality between races results from structural systems in which people are treated differently based on difference (race, power, privilege, etc.). From the recent Department of Justice report damning the pervasive, discriminatory policing practices in Ferguson, Missouri, to the persistent disparities between black and white people in wealth, education, health, employment, and housing, the effects are before our eyes if we are willing to see. The greatest challenge is eliminating disparities so that all people are treated equally and without prejudice based on their race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.

There is no particular sequence to these four activities. In the final analysis, all are essential to move forward from trauma to healing. With regard to racism, white people often want to rush toward reconciliation without doing the necessary hard work that is required along the way. We are here to tell you: The road is not easy, but the benefits are enormous.

What you can do today

Racism. Sexism. Religious intolerance. Inequality. Violence. It is easy to feel overwhelmed. What can one person do?

Engage your rational brain. Think about things in different ways. Examine your subconscious beliefs. Act in ways that lead toward positive change. Open your eyes to the injustices around you. Open your heart to see others, not as the Other but as brothers and sisters in the human family. You will find that others who believe as you do will congregate together and build social and political power to change the institutions that presently seem to control our fate. When peoples hearts and minds change, collectives like Coming to the Table can be empowered to bring change to society at large.

In 49 B.C., Julius Caesar stood on the northern bank of the Rubicon River in Italy, leading an army in defiance of the Roman Republic. It was an act of treason. The phrase crossing the Rubicon has survived to refer to any individual or group committing itself irrevocably to a risky or revolutionary course of action. It has come to mean passing the point of no return.

In 1965, John Lewis and more than 600 others crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the Rubicon of their day. We stand on the shore of todays Rubiconthe Rubicon of racism. We have a choice to make. We can choose the difficult task to acknowledge and heal our nations historic, inherited wounds and break free from the Cycles of Violence. Or we can do as our ancestors have done to us: pass the wounds on to our children. How will you choose?

About the Authors

Sharon Morgan is a marketing communications consultant, a nationally recognized pioneer in multicultural marketing, and a founder of the National Black Public Relations Society. An avid genealogist, she blogs extensively, leads workshops on African American family history, and is the webmaster for OurBlackAncestry.com. She is the co-author of Gather at the Table.

Thomas Norman DeWolf is featured in the Emmy-nominated documentary Traces of the Trade, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and on the acclaimed PBS series POV. DeWolf speaks regularly about healing from the legacy of slavery and racism at colleges, conferences, and workshops throughout the United States. He is the author of Inheriting the Trade and co-author of Gather at the Table. Follow him on Twitter at @TomDeWolf.

Dear Ben Affleck, My Ancestors Were Slaveowners, Tootag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b7c78086e6970b2015-04-27T13:41:04-04:002015-04-27T13:41:04-04:00Ben, America won’t change until enough white people change. You have the unique benefit of using your celebrity to make a difference. All people of European descent can use our power and privilege, to whatever degree we have them, to make a positive difference.Beacon Broadside

Get Over Your Guilt. It's Part of America's Historic Problem with Race

I’m certain being in the spotlight for not wanting the PBS show Finding Your Roots to include mention of your slave-owning ancestor has been a real pain. The unwanted headlines, the online comments, the “Dear Ben” letters must be getting old. I’m sure you want this whole episode behind you. I get that: I’m related to the most successful transatlantic slave-trading dynasty in U.S. history.

I thank you for your honesty in admitting you were embarrassed. Many white people, upon discovering enslavers among our ancestors, feel embarrassed, ashamed, and guilty. But as I learned from Will Hairston, a white descendant of one of the wealthiest Southern enslaving families in American history, “Guilt is the glue that holds racism together.”

I appreciate you writing on your Facebook page, “We deserve neither credit nor blame for our ancestors and the degree of interest in this story suggests that we are, as a nation, still grappling with the terrible legacy of slavery. It is an examination well worth continuing.”

Yes it is. And I can tell you from personal experience that what you choose to do next to continue that examination is what matters now.

Growing up in Southern California, I didn’t think much about family beyond my sister, parents, and grandparents. But when I was in my 20s, in the early 1980s, my friend David Howe told me he suspected we might be related because his father’s middle name was DeWolf. David’s father Halsey, an avid genealogist, confirmed that David and I were sixth cousins once removed, with a common ancestor born in 1695. Halsey told me about scoundrels in the family: “slave traders, rum runners, and privateers.” I envisioned something out of Pirates of the Caribbean.

Twenty years passed before I learned just how involved my family was in the slave trade. In December 2000, David received a letter from Katrina Browne, one of 200 she sent to far-flung relatives, inviting them to join her in retracing the triangle trade route of our ancestors. David shared the letter with me and suggested I call Katrina, who turned out to be my seventh cousin. After multiple conversations I was invited to be one of nine relatives to join her on a journey from New England to Ghana and Cuba and back.

During that summer of 2001, we learned facts of history I never learned in school; like that 95 percent of all slave-trading was done by Northerners, and half by people from Rhode Island. And that people were enslaved in all 13 original colonies. As for our family, three generations of DeWolfs, over 50 years, were responsible for transporting more than 10,000 people from West Africa into slavery in North and South America and the Caribbean islands.

Some members of our family did not appreciate our unearthing the family skeletons. We heard things like, “Why bring this up? That was so long ago. I’m not responsible for what my ancestors did. Black people are better off in America anyway. Why don’t they just get over it?”

As I learned by listening to African and African-American people on both sides of the Atlantic, “We don’t just get over it, because it’s not over.”

We stood in a slave dungeon in Cape Coast, Ghana, where as many as 200 men would be crammed together in a sweltering, 450-square-foot cell for up to 12 weeks waiting for a ship to take them away to be enslaved in a foreign land forever—sometimes by people I’m related to. Professor Kofi Anyidoho, distinguished national poet of Ghana, told us, “Slavery is the living wound under a patchwork of scars. The only hope of healing is to be willing to break through the scars to finally clean the wound properly and begin the healing.”

When traumatic wounds are not healed, we can literally pass them on to our descendants through our DNA (watch the documentary The Ghost in Your Genes). Unhealed wounds are passed on structurally as well. The legacy of slavery continues to benefit people who look like you and me, Ben—and they harm people of color. We only have to read the newspaper headlines to see that inequity and injustice based on race remains deeply embedded in the fabric of our nation.

You’re right. The harm our ancestors caused is not our fault. But repairing the present-day consequences of that harm is a responsibility we all share. I’m proud that Katrina decided to confront our family history—and that she made a commitment to deal with these consequences—head-on. Expressing regret is one step, but regret doesn’t amount to much without a commitment to repair the damage.

Here are a few suggestions. First, do the research, or hire people to do the research, on your ancestor, Benjamin Cole. You will find more ancestors who were involved in slavery. Find their wills, deeds, property documents, and letters: anything that offers evidence or clues to the identities of the people whom they owned. The descendants of enslaved people need this information, and white descendants of their owners control those records. Make those records readily available. Contribute your findings to Our Black Ancestry, a website dedicated to providing resources for African-American genealogical research.

Support efforts like The Slave Dwelling Project, which works to identify and preserve extant slave dwellings from demolition. To fully understand our personal and national history, it is critical to preserve and share as much of the history—physical, written, and oral—as possible.

You may have seen that several people posted links to Coming to the Table on your Facebook page. I’m the executive director of Coming to the Table, a community of descendants of enslavers and the enslaved who work together to acknowledge and heal wounds from racism that are rooted in the United States’ history of slavery. We—white people—need to come to the table in support of these and other such efforts.

And now I have a confession, Ben. I’m writing this “open letter” because you’re in the news. My real interest is to invite all white people in the United States to recognize our shared obligation in this work. Rather than distancing ourselves from culpability, let’s recognize that slavery drove the economy and built this nation we proudly call home. Every white person—directly or indirectly—participated and benefited. Everyone who has immigrated here has benefited.

Ben, you can wait for this story to fade and do little or nothing to make a difference. Any white person can do the same. But America won’t change until enough white people change. You have the unique benefit of using your celebrity to make a difference. All people of European descent can use our power and privilege, to whatever degree we have them, to make a positive difference. When we commit to doing so, we will heal wounds and achieve a better nation and world.

About the Author

Thomas Norman DeWolf is featured in the Emmy-nominated documentary Traces of the Trade, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and on the acclaimed PBS series POV. DeWolf speaks regularly about healing from the legacy of slavery and racism at colleges, conferences, and workshops throughout the United States. He is the author of Inheriting the Trade and co-author of Gather at the Table. Follow him on Twitter at @TomDeWolf.

No Indictment (and, Sadly, No Surprise) in Death of Eric Garnertag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301bb07bd78cb970d2014-12-06T11:00:00-05:002014-12-08T13:50:52-05:00Thomas Norman DeWolf, co-author of GATHER AT THE TABLE: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade, reacts to the grand jury's decision in the Eric Garner case.Beacon Broadside

NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 04: Hundreds of protestors gather at Foley Square in New York, United States on December 04, 2014. A Staten Island grand jury voted against criminal charges for New York City Police a white police officer Daniel Pantaleo who was accused of using a chokehold during an arrest of Eric Garner.

Let me see if I understand what just happened. Eric Garner was choked to death by a New York City police officer in July. The NYC Police Department prohibits the use of choke holds. Garner’s death was ruled a homicide. And the grand jury will not indict the officer involved. Is that about it?

“Again the system has failed us. “How? How? I don’t know how.” —Jewell Miller, who has an infant daughter with Eric Garner

All true. A New York grand jury failed to indict white police officer Daniel Pantaleo in the choke-hold death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, this past July. Sadly, I’m not surprised. After the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri failed to indict white police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, another unarmed black man, it’s what I expected.

And black people across the United States are reconfirmed in the knowledge that their lives are less valuable than the lives of white people. The lack of trust in law enforcement by black people grows stronger. And many white folks don’t understand. And the wide gulf between us grows wider; seemingly insurmountable.

There are questions about racism, about the treatment of people of color within and by the criminal justice system, about the legacy of slavery (which this is), that we as a nation—particularly white people—have so far been unwilling to seriously ponder. As long as white people avoid answering these difficult questions, what happened to Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and so many others, will happen again. And again. And again...

Questions such as:

Why are Michael Brown and Eric Garner dead at the hands of police while white suspects Jared Loughner (who killed 6 and injured 13 at a political rally) and James Holmes (who killed 10 and injured 58 at a movie theater) were not shot and killed by police, but apprehended to stand trial?

Why do young black males face a 21-times-greater risk of being shot dead by police than their white counterparts?

Why are black people 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people despite comparable usage rates?

These questions, if confronted honestly, should be deeply unsettling to white people because they go to the core of the “system” of criminal justice. The “system” is racist. People of good will may claim there is no intention to be unfair, unequal and racist, but intentions don’t matter. Outcomes matter. Do you suppose the fact that the Ferguson police force is 95% white while the general population of Ferguson is 67% black impacts the outcomes in the community?

“My son wants an answer. He is 10 years old, and he wants me to tell him that he doesn’t need to worry. He is a black boy, rather sheltered, and knows little of the world beyond our safe, quiet neighborhood. His eyes are wide and holding my gaze, silently begging me to say: No, sweetheart, you have no need to worry. Most officers are nothing like Officer Wilson. They would not shoot you—or anyone—while you’re unarmed, running away or even toward them.

“If the police stop you, I need for you to be humble. But I need more than that. I need for you to be prepared to be humiliated.”

I never thought about needing to teach such things to my children because the “system” is designed in favor of me and my children because we are white. And until white people begin to acknowledge, understand, and confront racism in our criminal justice system, the gulf between white and black Americans will continue to grow. And we will NOT be safer with more laws, more guns, and more militarized police forces. We will be safer when we confront and eradicate systemic racism.

My heart is heavy. I fear for my nation. I hope for healing, yet I am pessimistic. I continue to work for healing and hope more and more white people will join the struggle, yet I fear we will not overcome the hatred and the fear and the traumatic wounds we have been inflicting on our brothers and sisters for centuries.

“HELL NO!”: My Rage Against the Machinetag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b8d0a26e86970c2014-12-05T16:35:00-05:002014-12-05T16:35:00-05:00Sharon Leslie Morgan, co-author of GATHER AT THE TABLE: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade, reacts to the grand jury's decision in the Eric Garner case.Beacon Broadside
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<div style="padding: 0; margin: 0 0 0 10px; text-align: left;">Rev. Al Sharpton (L), President of the National Action Network, Esaw Garner (C), widow of Eric Garner, and Emerald Garner (R), daughter of Eric Garner, hold a press conference December 3, 2014 in New York, after a grand jury decided not to charge a white police officer in the choking death of Eric Garner, a black man, days after a similar decision sparked renewed unrest in Missouri.</div>
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<p>“Hell No!”&nbsp;That’s what Esaw Garner said in <a title="(Huffington Post) - 'Hell No!': Eric Garner's Widow Rejects Officer's Condolences Amid Shock Over Grand Jury's Decision" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/03/eric-garner-family_n_6265792.html" target="_blank">refusing to accept the apology</a> of the policeman who killed her husband Eric in New York City. And that is what I am saying today. I would like to write something erudite and wise, but those facilities fail me just now. I am feeling great empathy for the rage Louis Head (Michael Brown’s stepfather) unleashed in Ferguson, Missouri when he yelled, “<a title="(CNN.com) - Michael Brown's stepfather at rally: 'Burn this bitch down!'" href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/25/us/michael-brown-stepfather-video/" target="_blank">Burn this b**** down!</a>”</p>
<p>Metaphorically channeling the 1969 recording by Miles Davis that “sent a shiver through a country already quaking,” I am at a loss for words to fully capture my “Bitches Brew” of feelings. Miles led the revolution for jazz. I see it as a soundtrack for society—the one where, in 1969, I was a mere five years into the modicum of Civil Rights that forbade denial of equal protection under the law. In 2014, I continue to yearn for those rights to be applied—equally.</p>
<p>Perhaps what hurts most right now is my lack of surprise about what should be surprising events. Eric Garner and Michael Brown are merely two names on a very long list; to which I hasten to add the more than two dozen black women who have also been killed by law enforcement officers in recent years. It wasn’t a surprise when Darren Wilson was not indicted in Missouri. Nor was it a surprise when Daniel Pantaleo was not indicted in New York. It is not a surprise that an unarmed black person is shot every 28 hours by police, nor that black men are incarcerated at ten times the rate of whites.</p>
<p>In the 395 years since the first captive Africans were brought to North America, black people have endured slavery, “Jim Crow,” rioting (by whites), lynching, financial insecurity, social instability, medical experimentation, ethnic cleansing, the murders of our heroes, defamation, dehumanization, criminalization, and massive incarceration—at epic levels.</p>
<p>In 1857, the United States Supreme Court heard the case of <em>Dred Scott v. Sanford</em>, who was suing for his freedom. In committing the majority opinion that denied his plea to paper, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney said the authors of the Constitution had viewed all blacks as “beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”</p>
<p>Based on these historical precedents, the only thing that <em>does</em> surprise me is that so many white people continue to bask in an oblivious bubble of greed, selfishness, and privilege, refusing to accept what is so painfully obvious to people like me.</p>
<p>In coming days, another thing that will <em>not</em> surprise me is the blowback from deluded white folks and their black sycophants. It is already at fever pitch. They’re quick to point out that Mike Brown smoked marijuana; Eric Garner sold illegal cigarettes; black folks kill each other at higher rates than the police; black police officers were present when Eric Garner went down, so why didn’t they stop it? We can’t even grieve our lost children without cyberspace erupting with hateful commentary on how victims deserved whatever happened to them at the hands of dutiful “keepers of the peace” who “serve and protect”...who, exactly? Eric Garner wouldn’t be dead if he wasn’t fat and using up his breath to say “I can’t breathe.” Louis Head is being investigated for “inciting a riot” that everyone in America who has a television and some common sense knows was a direct result of community rage and how the police handled the aftermath of the Ferguson Grand Jury decision. Why don’t <em>they</em> stop it?!!</p>
<p>Darren Wilson was paid half a million dollars to do an interview on ABC-TV. Mike Ditka, the legendary coach of the Chicago Bears, said “This policeman’s life is ruined.” Well, what about Mike Brown and too many others? They are DEAD and things can’t get any more ruined than that.</p>
<p>So how much can we expect from a Justice Department when we have seen the blatant disrespect they have shown over the last six years for President Obama? It hardly put salve on the wound when Eric Holder announced the finding that Cleveland police have a history of using excessive force. Duh?!! Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge tortured more than 200 criminal suspects to force confessions over a 20 year period before he was brought to “justice” in 2010. He walked out of prison a free man with full pension last month after a slap on the wrist for “obstruction of justice and perjury.” His black victims remain incarcerated. Neither Obama nor Holder can fix America’s brokenness. Neither police training nor spending a zillion dollars on body cameras is an adequate solution. A video camera didn’t save Eric Garner; the man who shot the video was <a title="(The Independent) - The only person indicted over Eric Garner's death was the guy who filmed it" href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-only-person-indicted-over-eric-garners-death-was-the-guy-who-filmed-it-9903797.html" target="_blank">arrested AND indicted</a> by the same grand jury that let Daniel Pantaleo walk.</p>
<p>Even as protests continue, white folk will get rich selling legalized marijuana while black folk continue to languish in jail for selling the same thing. When white people riot after a football game, they are “letting off steam.” Policeman will get fired—immediately—for choke-holding white students. If a white man waves a gun, he will be “talked down and escorted home.” Forty-four percent of white people own guns (often more than one); 27 percent of black people do (only one). Against <a title="(Statistic Brain) - Gun Ownership Statistics &amp; Demographics" href="http://www.statisticbrain.com/gun-ownership-statistics-demographics/" target="_blank">those statistics</a>, who is more dangerous? Why is it is that white people so often receive a “get out of jail free” card while black people go directly to dead without passing “go”?</p>
<p>Civil rights advocate and writer, Michelle Alexander, reminds us that&nbsp;“Today, fifty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Acts and the supposed demise of the old Jim Crow, we have the mayor of New York City acknowledging that we are, once again, at a point in our history where black people must raise signs saying ‘Black Lives Matter’ because it is so blatantly obvious that the lessons of our history have yet to be learned.”</p>
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<div class="fb-post" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=725564284198198&amp;id=168304409924191" data-width="466"><div class="fb-xfbml-parse-ignore"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=725564284198198&amp;id=168304409924191">Post</a> by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Michelle-Alexander/168304409924191">Michelle Alexander</a>.</div></div></center>
<p><br />I side with <a title="(The Vulture) - In Conversation CHRIS ROCK" href="http://www.vulture.com/2014/11/chris-rock-frank-rich-in-conversation.html" target="_blank">comedian Chris Rock</a> when he says with all seriousness:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“...we treat racism in this country like it’s a style that America went through. Like flared legs and lava lamps. <em>Oh, that crazy thing we did.</em>... We treat it like a fad instead of a disease that eradicates millions of people. You’ve got to get it at a lab, and study it, and see its origins, and see what it’s immune to and what breaks it down.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What we need to perceive from the cumulative litany of so much wrong done for so long is that it is not just the police who need to be brought into check, it is ALL of us. Black communities need to mobilize against crime in our own communities. America needs to wake up to the realities that history has wrought and be aware that, if police abuse is allowed to continue, it will eventually come their way too.</p>
<p>Our hearts and minds must change—which is something no law or police intervention can achieve. It is only possible through conscious, individual choice combined with concerted, committed ACTION. And that action needs to address, not just police excess, but ALL of the inequities that are built into the American social fabric.</p>
<p>My closing comment is a reverberation of <a title="(The Concourse) - The American Justice System Is Not Broken" href="http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-american-justice-system-is-not-broken-1666445407" target="_blank">a blog post by Albert Berneko</a> in <em>The Concourse</em>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The American Justice System Is Not Broken. It is doing precisely what it is designed to do. The sooner we wake up to this reality, the sooner we can get to work building the kind of movement that holds real promise of transforming not only our ‘justice’ system but the American culture that created it. The system does not need to be ‘fixed’... It needs to be dismantled and replaced or utterly transformed. The only remaining question—after all that we’ve seen—is whether we are willing to speak the truth, face our history, and finally put an end to our nation’s history and cycle of creating these caste-like, dehumanizing, race-based systems in America.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I am inspired to see people of all races, nationalities, genders, religious persuasions, and ages on the move. I am proud to see them marching in their thousands, closing down highways and bridges across America. I am humbled to see protesters laying their bodies down in the streets, chanting “No justice, no peace.” I am relieved to see white people carrying signs that read “White silence = White consent.” And I pray it does not stop; that they, like Esaw Garner, will keep shouting, “Hell No!”</p>
<p id="author"><br /><strong>ABOUT THE AUTHOR</strong></p>
<p><a class="asset-img-link" style="float: left;" onclick="window.open( this.href, '_blank', 'width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0' ); return false" href="http://www.beaconbroadside.com/.a/6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b8d0a27106970c-popup"><img class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b8d0a27106970c img-responsive" style="width: 100px; margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px;" title="Sharon Leslie Morgan, photo credit Kristin Little" src="http://www.beaconbroadside.com/.a/6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b8d0a27106970c-100wi" alt="Sharon Leslie Morgan, photo credit Kristin Little" /></a>Sharon Leslie Morgan&nbsp;is a marketing communications consultant, a nationally recognized pioneer in multicultural marketing, a founder of the National Black Public Relations Society, and co-author of <a title="Two people—a black woman and a white man—confront the legacy of slavery and racism head-on" href="http://www.beacon.org/Gather-at-the-Table-P1011.aspx" target="_blank"><em>Gather at the Table:&nbsp;The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade</em></a>. An avid genealogist, she blogs extensively, leads workshops on African American family history, and is the webmaster for OurBlackAncestry.com.</p></div>
Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Tradetag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa8833017d3c98f65d970c2012-10-09T10:46:47-04:002012-10-09T10:47:34-04:00Two people—a black woman and a white man—confront the legacy of slavery and racism head-on.Beacon Broadside

Two people—a black woman and a white man—confront the legacy of slavery and racism head-on.

Thomas DeWolf—a descendent of slaveholders—and Sharon Morgan—a descendent of slaves—come together to openly discuss how the legacy of slavery and racism has impacted their lives. Together, they disclose the various difficulties and rewards they experience as individuals striving to heal. Gather at the Table is a timely, candid, and deeply relevant book that offers an engaging model of restorative justice.

Gather at the Tableis an extraordinary story of an honest, meaningful conversation across the racial divide. At times it hurts to read. And well it should. Centuries of injustice and trauma that face us every day in this country have no place for half-truths. Sharon and Tom took the harder road-searching for healing, they literally walked together into painful histories and found authentic friendship.”—John Paul Lederach, co-author of When Blood and Bones Cry Out: Journeys through the Soundscape of Healing and Reconciliation

“Sharon and Tom take us on a heart-opening journey of awakening. As a nation, we owe them a deep bow of gratitude as they help us navigate the deep divides of race and otherness.”—Belvie Rooks, Co-Founder, Growing A Global Heart

“Gather at the Table is an honest exploration into the deep social wounds left by racism, violence and injustice, as the authors work through their own prejudices in search of reconciliation–and ultimately find friendship.” —Leymah Gbowee, 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate

“What a courageous journey—communicated in an engaging, readable style, with candor, humor, and deep feeling. This book shed light on the thoughts, questions, and feelings I have about race, society, culture, historical, generational and structurally-induced trauma—and the human ability to transcend. In reading it, I realized there are questions I'm still afraid to ask about race, things I'm afraid to say, and yet I realized anew the power of acknowledgment, mercy, justice, and conflict transformation. I'm grateful to DeWolf and Morgan for not just taking the journey, but for sharing their story with us.”—Carolyn Yoder, Founding Director of STAR: Strategies for Trauma Awareness & Resilience and author of The Little Book of Trauma Healing: When Violence Strikes and Community is Threatened

“The authors’ accomplishment stands on its own, but their book also serves as a great introduction to a shared past that ought to be better known.”—Kirkus Reviews

July 4th and "The Immeasurable Distance Between Us"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa88330176160c958a970c2012-07-02T12:39:54-04:002012-07-02T12:43:24-04:00The words of Frederick Douglass on the meaning of Independence Day continues to hold meaning for many who find it hard to embrace the holiday.Beacon Broadside

Independence Day celebrations began this past weekend, with picnics, parades, and fireworks displays all around the country. In honor of the holiday, we asked several of our authors to share their feelings about Independence Day and what it means to them-- good and bad. Three authors who grapple with the complex history associated with the holiday quoted Frederick Douglass from his speech, "What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?" We've grouped their responses for today's post.

Bill Fletcher Jr. is a long-time racial-justice, labor, and international activist, scholar, and author. He has served in leadership positions with many prominent union and labor organizations, including the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union. Fletcher is currently the director of field services for the American Federation of Government Employees. He is the author of the forthcoming book "They're Bankrupting Us!" And Twenty Other Myths about Unions.

The 4th of July is always a complicated holiday for me. That is largely because it has a complicated historical significance. When I think of July 4th I immediately think about how my African ancestors were largely ignored-- except with regard to labor power and some soldiering--in the course of the events that were transpiring at that moment, and particularly ignored in the context of great minds thinking about the future of the new nation that they wished to create. I also think about how the War of Independence was in part ignited by the indignation of the settlers over restrictions imposed on them by the British regarding going further West-- into the lands of my Shawnee ancestors and other Native American nations.

As a result, I cannot uncritically celebrate July 4th. I consider, of course, the ideal that is contained in the Declaration of Independence, and am aware of those among the colonial settlers who may have had a more egalitarian vision of the future. I am equally aware of the ideal that July 4th is supposed to represent. But I am saddened each year that there is little historical examination of the contradictory nature of the War of Independence, and that for entire populations the War of Independence came to represent yet another stage on the road to their annihilation.

In the 19th century the great Frederick Douglass posed a question in a now famous speech "What to a slave is the fourth of July?" I would expand that and pose the question that today needs to be asked and answered: For those of us who believe in democracy, justice and equality, how do we disentangle the web of myth that surrounds the Fourth of July?"

We live in fearful times. War, racism, social, economic, employment, environmental, energy, health and food security issues are on the long list of things to be worried about. And I do. Worry.

On July 4, 1776, the day America declared its independence, one fifth of the population was in a state of bondage. Seventy-six years later, in 1852, abolitionist and former slave, Frederick Douglass, articulated, “There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.”

Although legal freedom came in 1865, when four million people were released from slavery, evidence of true emancipation did not come until 143 years later, when Barack Obama was elected the first African American President of the United States. In his inaugural July 4th address, he extolled, “That unyielding spirit [that] defines us as American... It is what has always led us, as a people, not to wilt or cower at a difficult moment, but to face down any trial and rise to any challenge, understanding that each of us has a hand in writing America’s destiny.”

This July 4th, I will be thinking about history and destiny... And celebrating my commitment to be an agent of change in the world independence has wrought.

Celebration of Independence Day ain’t what it used to be for me. What I’ve learned along the road I’ve traveled the past decade-- much of which is horrible, shameful and has been deeply buried or glossed over in America’s collective psyche-- has led me to reevaluate how I view myself and my country. On July 4, 1852, Frederick Douglass said, “Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me.” The deep wound of racism-– the legacy of slavery-– about which Douglass spoke has never been fully acknowledged and healed. I no longer celebrate “independence” that resulted in the annihilation of millions of indigenous people and the enslavement of millions of Africans. I don’t celebrate drone strikes in the name of freedom. I celebrate truth-tellers and peacebuilders. I celebrate the progress we have made and continue to make in the face of strong resistance. Mostly, I celebrate hope – the hope that one day we will live up to the ideals upon which this great country was founded.

How "The Help" Can Help Us Talk About Race tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa88330162fd7d1223970d2011-12-07T12:00:27-05:002011-12-08T09:51:57-05:00Tom DeWolf casts a sympathetic but critical eye on Katherine Stockett's book and the film adapted from it. Beacon Broadside

The movie of the best-selling novel The Help is now available for home viewing on video. (Spoiler alert! Key plot points are divulged through the web links in this post.)

For anyone who missed it in the theater, I highly recommend you watch The Help. When the book came out in 2009 I read it and loved it… and I was troubled by it… and I reviewed it…

One reason I recommend The Help is that it tackles very challenging subjects with sincerity and an eye toward justice and truth. Another reason I recommend it is because of… disquieting thoughts [it raised in my mind].

There has been some serious controversy in connection with The Help. Check out Patricia Turner’s New York Times Op-Ed, "Dangerous White Stereotypes," and "Of Anger and Alternative Endings" in the Jackson Free Press. The author of the latter column (Donna Ladd, a white woman) accurately (in my opinion) points out that…

The Help just could not have ended as it did. Hilly, or her man, would have called the [White Citizens] Council on Aibileen, Minny and Skeeter. My guess is that Aibileen would have been severely beaten and never hired again in the state; anyone related to Skeeter would have been destroyed economically and at least one cross burned in her mama’s yard; and Minny would have been killed and her house burned.

I am a post-civil rights black woman whose Southern roots have been nearly erased by world travel and an adulthood spent raising a family in Michigan. I am supposed to be offended by the movie The Help for its simplification of the injustices of the Jim Crow South. But I am not.

Black and white people have both praised and vilified The Help. One of the most powerful statements comes from the Association of Black Women Historians. The authors list several troubling, false, and stereotypical portrayals in The Help:

Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers. We are specifically concerned about the representations of black life and the lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism.

I respect the expertise and sincerity of the authors, and I’m troubled by one point they highlight:

We respect the stellar performances of the African American actresses in this film. Indeed, this statement is in no way a criticism of their talent.

How can the authors of this statement find it “unacceptable for either this book or this film to strip black women’s lives of historical accuracy for the sake of entertainment” and then praise the performances of the black actors who chose to portray those very characters? If you disagree so strongly with a white woman writing this story and claim that The Help misrepresents both African American speech and culture, wouldn’t it be more consistent to criticize the African American actors who chose to star in the film?

According to the cover story in Entertainment Weekly (#1167, August 12, 2011), Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer “love the characters of Aibileen and Minny, which makes having to defend them to detractors a strange and uneasy burden.” Spencer says,

I am thrilled to be playing this woman. She is a human being with the breadth and depth of emotions, and she is a contributing member of society. It should not be ‘Why is Viola Davis playing a maid in 2011?’ I think it should be ‘Viola Davis plays a maid and she gives the f—king performance of her life.’

I continue to think about The Help and the reasons I loved it and the reasons it troubled me. Jackson, Mississippi was a terribly racist city in the 1960′s when this story takes place. In far too many ways, Jackson (like the rest of our nation) still has such a very long way to go. Racism and hatred are alive and well (note the recent, brutal murder in Jackson of James Anderson). But ultimately I land on the side of those who recommend that people read or watch The Help. Love it or hate it or something in between, The Help, as pointed out by Jamia Wilson in her powerful and balanced article (she points out both positive and negative aspects) for Good Culture, inspires us to think and talk about race. That fact alone–that I continue to ponder the issues it raises (and I suspect anyone who has read the book or watched the film does as well)–is, in my opinion, the most redeeming quality about The Help.

NOW, one more point. I cannot stress enough how much I hope that people — particularly white people — will seek out other books by black writers on the subject of black domestic workers. The Association of Black Women Historians included a list of ten books at the end of their Open Statement to the Fans of The Help that they recommend. I’d like to highlight one of those books that I recently read; one that is published by my publisher, Beacon Press.

I loved Like One of the Family by Alice Childress [read an excerpt here]. This novel is a series of vignettes; brief conversations between Mildred, a black domestic worker, and her friend Marge. Childress creates a vivid image of the life of a black working woman in New York in the 1950s. It is funny, sarcastic, outspoken, and rings with truth. Here’s a brief excerpt:

‘Mrs. M…, what is the matter, you look so grieved and talk so strange ’til I don’t know what to think?’ She looked at me accusingly and said, ‘I’m afraid to say anything to you, Mildred. It seems that every time I open my mouth something wrong comes out and you have to correct me. It makes me very nervous because the last thing I want to do is hurt your feelings. I mean well, but I guess that isn’t enough. I try to do the right thing and since it keeps coming out wrong I figured I’d just keep quiet. I… I… want to get along but I don’t know how.’

Marge, in that minute I understood her better and it came to my mind that she was doing her best to make me comfortable and havin’ a doggone hard go of it. After all, everything she’s ever been taught adds up to her being better than me in every way and on her own she had to find out that this was wrong… That’s right, she was tryin’ to treat me very special because she still felt a bit superior but wanted me to know that she admired me just the same.

‘Mrs. M…,’ I said, ‘you just treat me like you would anybody else that might be workin’ for you in any kind of job. Don’t be afraid to talk to me because if you say the wrong thing I promise to correct you, and if you want to get along you won’t mind me doing so.’

This excerpt captures for me some of the challenges with The Help. Katherine Stockett did her best to write a book that would, well, help. It is flawed, as are all books, but it is her story; the story of a time and a place and people written from the perspective of a white woman. Balance The Help with Like One of the Family or one of many books about that time and place. Your knowledge and curiosity will grow. That is a good thing.

Lorraine Motel, 43 Years Ontag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa8833014e873a68c1970d2011-04-04T09:20:32-04:002011-04-04T09:20:32-04:00On the anniversary of the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas DeWolf reflects on how his life changed America.Beacon Broadside

Today, April 4, 2011, is the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. Two years ago I attended the White Privilege Conference in Memphis. My conference roommate Michael and I, along with two students at the college where he works, drove downtown to the Lorraine Motel, now home to the National Civil Rights Museum.

After Dr. King's death the Lorraine Motel plunged into an understandable downward spiral. Much like Memphis, I suspect, the motel would understandably never be the same. Eventually, a group of Memphis citizens formed the Martin Luther King Memorial Foundation and began the work that resulted in the 1991 opening of the museum and the 1999 purchase of the properties across the street from which the shot was fired that killed Dr. King.

The tour begins with a showing of the 2009 Academy Award nominated documentary short film The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306, the story of Reverend Samuel "Billy" Kyles, the man who stood next to Dr. King on the balcony when he was shot.

One of the most powerful experiences for me during the tour was stepping onto a bus inside the museum and seeing the cast figure of Rosa Parks sitting resolute, knowing that three other black folks in her row had left their seats so a white person could have a seat with no black people in the same row. Mrs. Parks' refusal to give up her seat was a defining moment, a turning point, in the civil rights movement.

Soon, standing behind the glass partition that has been erected between rooms 306 and 307 just a few feet from where Dr. King was shot took that horrible event from forty-one years ago and brought it powerfully into my present.

We then walked across the street to the building from which the fatal shot was fired. Looking back across the street toward the Lorraine I'm reminded of the feeling I've had at other significant historical sites.

It is all so small.

Plymouth Rock, Ford's Theater, Dealey Plaza, the Lorraine Motel; the scale is all so very human. The choice to perpetrate either harm or healing is always such a small, human one.

Another feeling I've had is that Dr. King has become an icon for racial harmony and reconciliation. "I have a dream today…"

People who, when I was a child, considered King a radical threat to national security now enjoy the day off for the MLK holiday. Most major cities now have streets named after him; even those where he once spoke against segregation and oppression against black people. Everyone loves Martin and use his name as they promote peace and racial justice (whether they believe in it or work for it or not).

Hey, I'm the first to shout from the mountain top that race relations are better now than when I was in junior high school during the Watts Race Riots. But I wonder what King would think if he were alive today. It seems to me that we have reduced the "I have a dream" man to an acceptable "pablum" symbol for pretty much everybody; particularly white people. We ignore his serious critique of the system of white supremacy in America. We ignore all that was radical about him in favor of our Kumbaya image of him. What we sacrifice as a result is the challenge of viewing ourselves in the stark mirror he held before us.

If King were alive today, I believe he would hold that mirror high and it would be quite an uncomfortable image for Americans to behold. King once said,

"A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

In 1967, King warned us against the "glaring contrast of poverty and wealth" that has only grown grossly wider today. So many people are being forced into poverty. Our environment is being destroyed. I suspect, no, believe, that King would be leading marches in resistance.

Today we have military troops in many countries around the world. We have initiated wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. In 1967, King said the United States was "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world." What is different today? I have no doubt that Dr. King would oppose such oppression.

Lots of folks feel comfortable believing in King's dream of a wonderful world where the color of our skin matters less than the content of our character. Fewer are comfortable discussing King's proposition that our country was on "the wrong side of a world revolution" of oppressed peoples.

I encourage you to ponder how we can continue to blind ourselves to Dr. King's radical beliefs and still pretend to honor him. On the anniversary of his death, we honor how his life changed America.

Horror has indeed resulted in hope.

That hope remains unfulfilled.

Revising Huck Finn, Revising Historytag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa88330147e153150f970b2011-01-06T11:33:28-05:002011-01-06T11:34:14-05:00The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is available in a new, altered version. The author of Inheriting the Trade writes about why he thinks this is a bad idea.Beacon Broadside

Mark Twain defined a “classic” book as one “which people praise and don’t read.” He should know. How many of you have read Huckleberry Finn? This “classic” has been condemned, banned, or people attempted to ban it, in a variety of locations, and for various reasons, since it was first published in 1885. Back then it was banned because Twain had the audacity to create a character, Jim, who was not only black, but as human–and as fully developed–as the other major characters in the story. Jim is not only fully human, but the hero of the story. It ran contrary to everything white Americans had been raised to believe; that white America had been built upon since its founding.

When I was in junior high school in the 1960′s, several of my black classmates wanted the book banned from our school library for a different reason: because Twain regularly refers to Jim with the “n” word, which they found deeply offensive. Many teachers in K-12 classes struggle with how to teach this masterpiece, about which Hemingway said, “All American writing comes from that.” It is challenging to explain to kids today the context in which Huck Finn was written. I believe I understand the difficulties teachers face.

Caveat: in the interest of full disclosure, I’m a white man writing about a book that was written by a white man–albeit one who died 100 years ago in a very different era. I encourage readers to ponder these facts as you consider my words. I also encourage you to consider what others have written, like Princeton Professor Melissa Harris-Perry or author Earl Ofari Hutchinson for instance. Further disclosure: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the best book I’ve ever read. No one else can ever write the “Classic American Novel.” It has already been published. This is it.

A new version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is now being published by New South Books. Twain scholar Alan Gribben is the editor. He has replaced the “n” word with the word “slave.” I’m sure Dr. Gribben and New South Books have the noblest of intentions; to get Twain back into K-12 classrooms.

And there are many reasons why this is a really bad idea. I’ll focus on two:

Utilizing the word “slave” perpetuates one of the dehumanizing aspects of the system of slavery. Describing someone who was owned by another as a “slave” strips away her or his humanity–reduces that person to a commodity. They were enslaved people, not slaves.

I understand the challenge that educators face, but what are classrooms for if not to struggle with difficult subjects in order to wrestle with them? The one way we will finally heal from the legacy of slavery is to talk about all aspects of it no matter how difficult, awkward, and hurtful those conversations may be. Hiding behind an alternative word–and a poorly chosen one at that–does not teach students to deal honestly with truth; it does nothing to teach people to struggle together with difficult subjects; it does nothing to help with healing from the historic trauma that continues to afflict the people of the United States. It perpetuates injustice and ignorance.

When my grandchildren are old enough to enjoy and learn from Huckleberry Finn I hope they’ll read it the way Twain wrote it. I trust their parents–and hopefully their teachers–to work with them to understand the context of the times in which Twain lived and wrote, the horrible system of slavery that drove the entire economy of our nation, and why it is important to understand and talk about these issues.

We’ve all heard that the roads in Hell are paved with good intentions. This new edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a well-intentioned mistake. Read the original. Then read it–and discuss it–with your children.